The Alpaca Farm

There is a mouse in the house. Louise screamed and bolted herself in her room. Molly the white cat cried to come in. We let Kitten have free roam of the house at night. You could hear her running and leaping, sliding across the old wood floor. It's been two nights now. Kitten makes acrobatic sounds in the middle of the night, the mouse must be fast.

This morning the sky was filled with light. Even now it butters the fields. The alpacas blink and watch me open the nesting box door, two eggs lie in the straw. I make oatmeal to thank the hens.

Here are a few photos from this morning. Enjoy!

Anonymous

in celebration of birth

Today, fifty-some years ago, twenty four how I feel, millions the age of my spirit, I was pushing my elbow into my mother, trying to make a little more space, and sighed, the sigh an unborn baby does without air, kind of like a hiccup into water, all silent, soft movements, and I thought the thoughts of unthinking, before words came one by one to crowd a new fresh brain, and I readied to flow downstream into my new life. Into my mother's arms, my father's embrace, into the air, the loudness. Into the land of corners and hard surfaces. And I would always seek oceans and rivers, I would return over and over to songs of water for my hungry ears.

Here I am on the alpaca farm, driving daily along Patterson Creek, to the Snoqualmie and Raging Rivers at Fall City, up the long hill to the Falls, through Snoqualmie and into North Bend. All these rivers. They are my sisters. My mother. I watch the light from the broad sky bend down, it shimmers on wet pavement, streaks across the water. Warms my face.

Here's to life. Thank you for being here with me.

for my daughters Heather & Kelsey

T.L. Stokes

Before Summer Comes

And in the last gold tongues
falling from the open mouth
of the ridge,

shuffled into shades
of deepening black,

sun, the cloaked thief,
leaves

with eyes turning away from
us beggars--

always clambering
for warmth--

never happy to have
our light stolen.

The Addiction for Mermaids

Oh beloved,
I lay naked under the sea
contently kelp-anchored
and serene.

Oh beloved,
you call on each and every wave
frothy and young,
erect

in the wind of my memory.

I swim once a year for a season
wearing rust and red
on my silver breasts,
my tail flashing like teeth.

Oh beloved,
you throw lines hopeful
to entice a fight,
one glimpse

of my rare back
in the morning as the sun
heaves into town.

Oh beloved,
will you drift in a red or green boat
all day, sitting or standing,
murmuring prayers

you won't allow
any others to hear?
I hear the bass notes

as they fall like small black stones,
voiceless
and vibrating into my bedroom.

I am not hungry
you understand,
I do not seek you

and only if you chance
the right place,
perfect time

with a hoax
of color and feather
it dawns on me

to bite.





c2009 Flood Water Press

thepostofficepoems.blogspot.com

News!

Hello dear readers. I've posted the new poem on the post office bulletin board. There was a tiny note tacked onto the last poem--we've been invited to have some of the poems published in the Fall City Newsletter.

Well, pour some tea or brew some rich coffee, settle back and read the poem "Sherry" below. It is dedicated to a special young woman so many of those living in Fall City knew. Especially if they enjoyed a meal or two, or a cup of coffee at the Raging River.

May your holiday be safe, full of family, friends, and pie.

peace,
Anonymous

Sherry

The river hangs bells for Christmas
along the sand turned crystal.
My steps disturb them just enough,
and the gentle chimes
and watery words
say this:

Goodbye,
to the sun we remember
crossing your girl-moon face,

goodbye
to words dropped on the table
between you and the rest of us,

my coffee cup,
our napkin,
a plate of all good things.

And more than the food,
the sweetness,
more than the sun,
now before us this winter
without you,

more than your children,
your family,
more than our grief,

is this--

ice bells on the river,
silence,
the frozen steps in sand,

--reminders you're closer now
to everything.

I feel you here even at the farm,
as alpacas saunter from the barn
and the air warms

before the next snow comes.

I will feel you at the gathering
of mourners, we'll talk about you,
you'd be embarrassed but it's ok.
We're all bringing lucky pots,
I made brownies.

I will feel you in the teary eyes,
the gulp of air your sister takes
while telling the story of your passing,

how your heart skipped away,
Thanksgiving was an unsteady boat,
your oars fell, you slipped from us so gently,
like water, like a song that ends too soon,

like the sun turned cold for a day
and a night,

we looked up
and you were gone.

But I remember,
and when I see the photo on the poster
on the door to the Saloon

it all comes back.
You come back in the telling,
in the memory,

in the thousands of bells
chiming the completion

of your interrupted song.




for Sherry
because we love you

c2009 Flood Water Press

Seven Pigeons and the White Angel

For two hours I hiked along beaches
of the Snoqualmie, fog gray fingers
played in red and gold leaves,
dark-faced shadows shrank behind
the stones, and the sun shot pins through
purple green water on bushes.
The beach was deserted.

The great salmon burrowed their heads
as far upstream as they could.
Their tired backs looking frost-bit,
spotted tails churned troughs of
black silver. I stood spellbound.
Listened to water singing so low
I could almost not hear it at all,
but there was a hunger to the notes.

Above my head a flock of pigeons circled,
one white angel in their midst. I found out later
they pulled a young man from the river
drenched and unbreathing the evening before.
They worked on him a long time, they said,
but the spirit just kind of leaked right out of him.
I think it rose up into the fog coming that night
like a blanket, like an unexpected answer
to a life unevenly driven,

I think it turned white like the salmon,
I think its wings opened--
right there in the midst of a flock
of common pigeons,

you should have seen it,
circling a few times

just before leaving.


***


for Mac

October 13, 2009

Four Feathers from Fall City

For days I walked the streets of Fall City,
an unusually grounded little town,
its farm houses egg yolk and pond blue painted,
dormer windows shy and alert,
old porches nodding off,
mowed lawns, red barn hen house,
chickens reciting poetry over their morning egg,
and I passed by two feathers
and didn't pick them up.

Today I stopped and looked into a tree
like a wide hand curving its fingers open
with five crows fidgeting into different poses.
They interrupted and complimented each other
constantly. One flew off. There on the ground
at my feet were four crow feathers.
Two long wing pinions and two wide tail feathers.
Blue spears. Traveled shadows.

I put them fanned out like onyx knives
on the wood table by the soft light and three
rock candles Heather gave me.

At night, they float over me singing
old Beatles songs, tapping lightly on the window,
forgetting their names, how they got here,

where they misplaced their
warm black bodies.



for Shoeless Joe,
the greatest one-and-a-half legged crow
I ever met.

October 6, 2009