Cresting the Cascades (the Feathered Scent of Hope)

 

A thousand trees from sunset,

each with a hand held out our windows

 

cupping an apricot wind,

a warm pine breeze combs through our hair.

 

We curve, and twist,

take one last dip

 

before the fall of the sun

and the rising

 

of a champagne moon

bubbling up,

 

spilling the glass,

jealous of day’s light.

 

And just like that,

she’s cresting the berried branches,

 

nesting on the seat

between us,

 

that thing with feathers,

suddenly thirsty, opening wide,

 

suddenly bright.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

  

For The Word Garden Word List and

What’s Going On?  Fragrance

 

Hope is the thing with feathers – Emily Dickinson, of course.

 

Fault, Lines

 

You understood

nothing

except the piece

of yourself

you tore out of us

and tossed at the fault line

beating like a heart.

 

I built this poem

around the jagged wound,

refired in the kiln of a sun

who heard my

silent bleeding

and wept aloud

for the breaking you had done.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

dVerse Poetics: Building from the Broken

 

The Last Emerald Summer

 

The last emerald summer

popped hot in the pan—

buttery, like sweet corn and tomatoes,

 

like the last sultry twilight

I spent waiting for your heart to choose.

 

Even when the first leaves fell,

my eyes were on the evergreens

still convinced it would never snow.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

Poetic Bloomings #547 Meant to Last

 

Van Ghosted

 

They say there’s much you can do with

stale bread.

 

Panzanella, bruschetta, crostini.

Croutons, bread pudding.

 

How like spring,

new and fresh, it goes quickly,

 

and then, the blistering oven

of summer is here.

 

But, how do you salvage a poem, like sunrise,

so fleeting you can never seem to catch it in time?

 

Like manna.

Here and gone.

 

I saw it today, etched into the glass of a window

with an epitaph:

 

Your wings were ready, but my heart was not.

I see how it is. 

 

I glimpsed you briefly, soft-robed phantom,

boarding a train to somewhere else,

 

orphaned, like my last vanished poem,

not a breadcrumb in sight,

 

on into the starry night.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

Word Garden Word List

dVerse OLN

 

"Your wings were ready, but my heart was not." - Amelia Hutchins

 

When you just don’t jot it down in time.  Know the feeling?  Maybe it will return, when it, and I, am ready. ;)