Meant to Be

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

It only takes a moment

to see the light

as it’s crossing your path,

like quail to the apricot tree.

It only takes a moment—

and fifteen years later you know

it still is.

  

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

Tomorrow my husband and I will be celebrating our 15^th Anniversary.  I have been absent from the blogging world for a bit…vacationing where there is not much internet connection and will be absent a bit more for celebrating our Anniversary.  I hope summer is treating you all well!

Pinwheel

I don’t miss raindrops;

they’ve had their day.

I don’t miss March,

April, or even May;

especially when I see

the sweat

trickling down your back

and hope you

pick me

to throw into your sack.

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

For two prompts.  Margaret Bednar at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads wants us to drip with heat…err summer.  This gorgeous photo is hers.  If you’ve gotta have more go here.  You won’t regret it!  And Peggy Goetz wants us to Feel the Heat in ten lines or less at Poetry Jam.  She’s an excellent photographer as well.  Go here to see more.  Happy summer!

Nightjar

You can hear them,

like little ghosts

haunting the air at night,

though we don’t have

the blue note whippoorwill

in our evergreens.

If you’ve ever hummed a dry, lonesome aria

from your own warbling wind struck throat

you can hear them—

in the hollowed out whisper-choke,

strummed endless in black on wet pillowed nights,

haunted and hidden.

Yes, you can hear them, even here,

always, when you’ve known lonely,

so ink-dark and bled deep to bone.

Or maybe they can hear you.

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

At dVerse host Tony Maude has invited us to write to any FFA or MTB prompt they’ve offered in the past.  I chose Victoria Slotto's Literary Allusion.  One of my all time favorite short stories is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving.  I also love the haunting song Midnight in Montgomery by Alan Jackson.  Each work references the beautifully eerie call of the nightjar bird, the Eastern Whip-poor-will.  I have alluded to each work in my piece.  Happy year 3 dVerse! 

Brandywine

Organic Brandywine Tomato Sprouts

I’m going to buy an orchard

and pick fruit, waving flies away.

I’ll wear a straw hat

and a sleeveless shirt.

I’m going to garden

and bake pies—

thick ones, full of hearty chunks of tart fruit.

And I am going to walk in the evenings,

when it’s still light,

after grilled chicken and sliced tomatoes.

And I’m going to forgive myself

when I remember all the things I never did.

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

Poets United:  The Poetry Pantry

 

Thief

Steller's Jay

plumage

in silver blue,

sooty crest of charcoal

worn like a thief’s mask, and it’s true,

she will

rob the songbirds’ freshly twigged nests

of eggs and chicks when seeds

and ash berries

run low

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

A butterfly cinquain for Poetry Jam:  A Bird’s Eye View.  I don’t have my own photo of a Steller’s Jay but we see them often around here.  They are beautiful, loud and predatory.  For more about the Steller’s Jay go here.