The Waxing Moon: Cold snap

Friday, January 28, 2011

Cold snap

Lupine jaws
with a flick of spit, a frothy comma
running shallow
as a laugh along your spine,
hackles raised into
a sacred crown of splintered frost

Rachel Westfall
January 27, 2011

4 comments:

Kat Mortensen said...: Hey Rachel! Love the opening line and the play-on-words title too.
The last line is the kicker though. Really well done!

Kat; January 28, 2011
Miss Sadie said...: Coyote's back.

The shadow is laughing along the back of the Coyote who's back.

I can see him, but I'm not going to play with him. Way too dangerous. Still.; January 28, 2011
Joseph said...: Ooh, that "frothy comma" stands out particularly well. Great image here, a perfectly detailed outline to be filled by the reader.; January 30, 2011
christopher said...: At The Rest Stop

Am I a flower
or a wolf, I muse, as you
declare me lupine.

The Cisalpine slopes
were once my favored flavor
but I fear they're lost,
for I now am pent
if not up, still trapped within
my defrocked carriage.

So flower or wolf?
But I would not ask you this.
It is not seemly.; February 14, 2011

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This place is a story

The Waxing Moon was a thin book, well-worn and poorly bound, spine inexpertly repaired with tape. After school, sheltered by the stacks of the public library, the children secretly read spells from the book, never daring to borrow it. It was full of mysteries: spells that disappeared warts with knotted red string and dripping eaves; how to become invisible by placing amethyst under the tongue; stranger things involving cat bones. One day, the book was gone, and I always wondered which one of us had taken it. I'm pretty sure it wasn't me.

Coyote Grief

Sometimes the night stills,
hardens, and the tight stars choke
and fall to flat earth,
dead embers. The sky
is no longer black, dim gray.

Coyote's sadness
is deeper than hope.

She snuffs at dead stars amazed,
confused, wants to put
them back, cannot reach
that high, to the dim flat sky.
They won't burn again.

This beautiful, sad poem was written by Christopher in response to my poem Without memorial. It was too lovely to remain buried in the comments, so I put it here on my windowsill, where the sunlight may fall across the words to heal Coyote's grief.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Cold snap

4 comments:

This place is a story

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