Sunday, October 9, 2016

Red Fox (to My Poems)



Vulpes vulpes, with your

little black nose,
your anxious eyes,
darting,

your den, under leaves
once red,
are ochre, burnt umber, and blowing away

in the air
of wet earth and maple smoke exhaled.

My palms,
holding ash
up to my fingertips, cool to the touch,

warm with a flame I cannot fan,
everything dying, like this.

But I’ll find you,
sometime October,
under the chestnut tree

wagging your tail,
Vulpes vulpes,
for me.


© 2016 Jennifer Wagner


It seems I am too busy for poetry right now.  But sometimes, she finds me.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

De(e)p-ression De-funk




I haven't thought
of hollyhocks
in quite some time,

nor roses.

Stone flowers
gray my landscape—hard,

the way the light isn’t light anymore,
but an intrusion, an offense,
to the dark soil of my seedling,

nursing safe, until color is ready to form,
replacing stone,
crumbling statues,

bleak memorials of times past,
headstones of a previous life—

to reach, to grow,
to topple them,
with leaves and stem

and oh, the most glorious bloom.


© 2016 Jennifer Wagner


The Great Stone Church 
Photo © 2016 Jennifer Wagner