Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Jennifer Lagier- Three Poems & Photos

 
 
 
 
Redwood Retreat
Cazadero, September 2014
 
Precarious dirt road
ploughs uphill to sunset ridge
past buckeyes and redwoods
overlooking dry river.
 
Sequoia sentinels
drag feathery limbs
through morning mist
as it hangs above canyon.
 
Tough skinned survivors
stretch skyward from
mosaic forest mulch,
cloak a fairytale cabin.
 
Stellar jays screech
insults to common crows,
whet their beaks
upon fallen pine cones.
 
I sip coffee, wrestle images,
invoke imperfect poetry,
explore every what if
from this tiny oak table.

 
 
 
 
Still Life
 
"Not love, not the wind, not the inside of stone."    ~ Mary Oliver
 
Sleepy bohemian village is beginning to waken:
tourists at tables, scent of coffee, toasted cinnamon bagels.
Fall garlands, faux goblins and ghosts, mingle with pumpkins.
Witchy Halloween dioramas decorate store fronts.
 
Curiosity pulls me along haunted streets,
down enchanted trail past rusty leaf drifts,
toward intersection of estuary and ocean.
Spectral light suffuses transient beach strand.
 
Sunrise sucks ephemeral mist from blanketed bay,
bares lavender fog banks, gilded fairytale headlands,
conjures dour ravens speaking in tongues,
the one-legged sea gull who circles for handouts.

 
 
 
 
Breach
 
The sea boils with a combination
of brown kelp and anchovies.
 
Terns fling themselves from gray sky, belly flop
like clowns, disappear under wave spume.
 
Lacy umbrellas erupt across agitated bay.
Breaching whales spout just off shoreline.
 
Wherever birds congregate, misty blow follows.
Behemoth flukes rip apart silver spindrift.
 
This is a prehistoric flashback: raw, watery
planet that teems with magnificent monsters.



Jennifer Lagier is an unrepentant snake follower.

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