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Old barns with 'See Rock City' painted
on clapboard sides
'White washed' antique 'Smokehouses' with hand dug Water-wells are monuments celebrating another time
Pole barns with RC Cola thermometers -
and Red Man chewing tobacco signs , tin -
roofs and dirt floors with hay lofts and -
old John Deere tractors inside
Copyright July 18 , 2016 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
  Jul 2016 Mary Winslow
Jeff Stier
O sister
when did you become
the perfect treatise
on love and
the sacred painted face?

When did your words
divide the day
from my night?

It was ninety yesterdays ago
when first your verse
startled my eyes
speaking a language
native to this ground
speaking with grace
with love
and with a defined determination
sweetened by the red clays
of your home

The soul of the prairie
holds you in its embrace
the long vista
the tornado
the tempest
all compete for your attention

And here I stand
at the back of the line
humble
one hand in my pocket
one holding an urgent postcard

It simply says

Keep this in
your hand
it is for you.
For NagĂ­. Sister poet and human bean.
  Jul 2016 Mary Winslow
Fay Slimm
Running amok black bellies of hail-clouds
divest their hard cargo
on near-ready harvest and thunder claps
in spiteful applause.

Scudding sails of racing white galleons
arrive to the rescue
and change weather's position as quiet
breaches gale's disorder.

Setting the sun throws magenta feathers
across dark horizon
and to settle the issue parades jade tints
as the landscape transforms.

Waiting small boats plod homewards in
fish-laden formation
while wives run to stoke hot-kettled fires
of ready bath water.

Lighting a pathway half-moon winks as
heavier catches in
hauled nets silver the harbour and men
start night's final performance.

Sating hunger with coming and going
sow-and-reap women know
the meaning of sharing male labour in
scaling and salting chores.

Fisher-folks' world begins and ends
with the vagaries and quirks of weather.
  Jul 2016 Mary Winslow
Jeff Stier
My avid gaze
spoke to the rosary
of your flesh

My heartsick tremors
marked me as a wanted man
and burned the villages
of my ancestors

I was a refugee
from time
a friend to no man

My tears washed the blood
from my hands
my eyes withered
the tender bud

So when did I read poetry
on your lips?

Did your mountains fracture
and disintegrate into
sparkling shards
as mine did?

Was the moon an egg
in your basket
as it was in mine?

Little do we know
of the other
when first we clasp hands
and agree

In time
and with luck
we learn.
I tried to write a poem in the style of Pablo Neruda.
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