Murmuration: The Writers.com Community Journal

Since moving to Belize, I have adopted (or tried to) two starving stray dogs. Only one of them is still with me.

I was taught to sit on my hands. Stop the popping of my bottle rocket limbs. And as for the bonfire cracking through my lips? Swallow it whole right now!

I did that dog rescue thing and got myself a dog. A scrounge-y, mongrel-ey mutt of a creature. I found it in the last cage next to the shelter’s euthanasia station.

Alone in a canoe, deep in the boreal forest, we are floating on the calm of summer. I am on a quest to spot a moose, a long-time dream for a lover like me.

I can see. We all can see. What matters is not that we see but what I, and too, we see. Not with our face planted eyes, but with those of the mind.

I listen to the rain and the ‘ping, ping, ping’ of water dripping on something metallic outside as I sit in my quiet room…

And if I peer out from umbral shadows / to meet my gaze through the mirror’s eye

Let’s start primordial, billions of years ago, when the solar system came to be.

“Yo no soy de aquí,” sings Uruguayan singer-songwriter, Jorge Drexer, “pero tú tampoco.” I am not from here, but neither are you. Today, I stand watch on the corner, protected by my white, US-American…

I wake up to the sound of a compact disc spinning without music. Instead of the crackle and pop of a vinyl record the player emits a soft metallic swish. The Bose alarm clock radio and…

Not every witch’s curse is undeserved, but they all are punishing. Such was the case with Mallt, the old witch who lived deep in the forest.

I received the email that Linda promised for Mary’s Peak, her monthly poetry group, when we met at the local group in Salem.

“Do you actually remember the name of your second grade teacher?” asked my sister, Peggy.

The bridge, just there pulls dark thoughts of fearful waiting Into luminous relief. Its intently lit strength beacons into unmapped days devoured by nights of need to feel the timbre of my son’s voice.…

Across an open wheat field, harvesters are caught napping, sprawled like starfish, in billowed sleeves formal for laborers, rows of cotton folds and collars that hint at tailor’s starch. One tucks into the…

We coat ourselves in wools and downs– thin barricades against creeping cold that seeps through cracks in walls, fiber, spirit, bone. We retreat, chased by encroaching shadow. As if to mock us, the trees strip…

A small brook moves by with the sounds of the ripples in the stream echoing the bottom rocks that tie the brook to the earth and the music of nature. The bright yellow flowers move softly…