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J O H N S T O N E W R I T E R S G R O U P |
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THREE POEMS BY Jim Carruth
WILD POPPIES A ragged band of troubadours perform each year at this roadside venue by the steps to the drying green. With a burlesque rush of blood, Spring catapults into untamed Summer, tissues explode from a magician’s fist. Whirling arched and bowed thin stemmed gypsies struggle under heavy red taffeta.COWS IN THE FOG The morning haar strips contours from the land submerges animals in the valley. Somewhere beyond vision a gate has fallen the farm’s two herds become one. Shape shifting, adrift from the shore, they are bellows of sea lions, cries of stranded whales. Every utterance from their muzzles freezes a grey mist: Mothers and daughters, one great breathing, heads raised to listen for a sonar bond; or the sad bell of voice unanswered.MACLEAN'S WAY HOME Famed for his love of Laphroaig, a 1957 gold Fergie, and most of all his homing instinct his exits from local barn dances were legend. Refusing lifts when the time was right he would just take off as the crow flies straight across fields over ditches and dykes dancing with shadows on the hill. On longer journeys he would nap under hedges rise with bird call and early light. One morning his wife found him snoring on his back in the spare room: a scarecrow fully clothed sprouting hay. Around the same time Andy from Dampton farm discovered his field of scattered bales assembled in neat stacks. Like the signature stench of fox they marked someone passing through, a days work already done. |