The River <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The clear stream carried the morning sunlight to the bend
where it disappeared. I waded in and cast my line
to the shallows of the opposite bank, hoping to hook Walleye or Bass.
After an hour or two of casting and reeling, catching nothing but time,
I was ready to close my tackle box and call it a day,
when, from out of nowhere, a dragonfly landed on the tip of my rod.
Perched in a six-legged grip, it was a blue bloom at the end of a long stem.
The wings, glinting in sun, translucent, thin as a whisper, did not move,
resembling a biplane grounded. Its eyes looked like dark observatories.
Then, as quick as a blue-tipped match stuck to life,
the dragonfly lifted, hovering for a moment,
before disappearing into light, leaving me standing there,
the first catch of the day, shimmering in water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Desert Menagerie <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hummingbirds are created when you blow out the flame
\nof a blue-headed match.
\nBlue jays come to life after a jazz saxophone riffs a solo.
\nGrackles are black bishops that have risen
\nfrom chess boards and flown away.
\nTarantulas are born from the char of pi\u00f1on trees
\nstruck by lightning.
\nLizards are desert hailstones that have melted and merged with sand.
\nA photographer left rolls of negatives in a dilating solution
\nand never returned to his house; after decades,
\nthey developed into skunks.
\nRavens took shape when the first question was asked.
\nScorpions are made from rapiers clashing.
\nBears and bees have the same mother, the honeyed sounds
\nof children laughing.
\nSome spiders enter existence when an asterisk is written,
\nothers from shooting stars.
\nCoyotes are court jesters made by moonlight.
\nAny time there is a traffic jam, horned toads come into being.
\nBefore there were petroglyphs, there were no foxes.
\nHawks hatch from shafts of heat whenever ships unfurl their sails,
\nas sailors strike blue-headed matches to light their lanterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Keith Polette has returned to writing poetry after spending years in prose, and has been fortunate to have had his poetry published in both print and online journals. He currently lives and writes in El Paso, Texas. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The River The clear stream carried the morning sunlight to the bend where it disappeared. I waded in and cast my line to the shallows of the opposite bank, hoping to hook Walleye or Bass. After an hour or two of casting and reeling, catching nothing but time, I was ready to close my tackle … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa867U-qi","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1630"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1719,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630\/revisions\/1719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/ruescribe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}