Forest Water Color
by Andrea Ferrari (aferrari@stmariy.edu.ar)

Time-lapsed clouds
roll like pigment on watered paper
blackgreywhite
dampening green, greening light.

Lichen eyes spread
their watch further, turn owls, merge
and defuse.

You tread the dark soil in rain
unafraid of thunder in the distance
going in
going into
a jungle of water
dissolving the edges of leaves
and trees
and you

sudden watercolor of the soul

Returning to the Road Failed Before

Young man’s whim dared to cross the road
with the deep chasm and muddy hill,
his jalopy sputtered, exhausted.
He turned to go back.

Decades later, having reached the top
of the hill of his reluctant choice yet
turned out just right, he looked back at

the rough road he once failed to cross.
The shinny pickup veered smoothly
the chasm and climbed the muddy hill, and
out to the open prairie so vast that the horizons
in all direction meet the cerulean blue sky.
He continues on the dirt road that cut through

the sagebrush prairie and snakes to the horizon,
arrives at the junction of two lonely roads
with no sign. He takes the road more traveled.
Miles later, he sees an old ranch house ahead. He
swings round to the other road overlooked earlier
leads to the highway that takes him home.

©Byung A. Fallgren

Memory of him

“We live as it happens then go,”
he said while drunken. “That’s life.”
My thought, at ten:
I want to go worth Mother’s ordeal.

His dream to be a doctor left
when obeyed his father coxed him
to be a police man, instead.
Mother said once he helped a farmer keep
his land could’ve lost in the dispute with
a Japanese unlawful. Since then, at times,

Mother found bags of potato or rice
at our doorstep. Ignoring his word
to take them back to the farmer,
she fed her hungry children
To add to the hardship,
he quit his job even before finding new one
to estrange the corruption, derailed colleagues.

He delivered all his children by himself…
Only if were he not a drunk…
he would’ve had the better one to say than that.
Only if…but…
Tired, idiotic good soul,
gone, leaving me with his gene.

©Byung A. Fallgren

Lovely Deadly Poppies, by Rita M. Yager
(yagojohn@aol.com)

Poppies

don’t
be afraid of me
just call me
a friend worried
for your imprudence

©Byung A. Fallgren

Mrs. F and the Bird’s Mind

The old lady buys a new bike and keeps it
in the shed. Weeks later, she finds
her red-and-blue darling covered with
bird poop, accusing her, “See what happenes
when you buy the stuff you don’t use?”
Her mouth drawn in thin line
she glares at the noisy bird nest at the edge of
the ceiling above the bike.
The baby wrens now silent, sensed the terror.
In her sizzling mind, her hubby grins.
“Like him, like the little sh*ts!” She grabs
an old fishing pole and, like a mad cat, swings
the stick to pull the straw hanging from the nest,
“Let me see you, little things!”
Mommy wren, with worm in her beak, shrieks,
startling Mrs. F falls
on her butt amid the bird poop.
Clutching her aching back, she struggles on her feet,
fights her temptation to yank the straw,
lest the nest with the baby birds fall.
She pictures the terrified little ones in the nest,
their little hearts pounding in the tiny, fuzzy chest.
She’s never before seen closer baby birds in the nest,
her curiosity, fueled by anger,
she pulls the straw a bit more forward to see them,
but the nest doesn’t budge.
Outside, the mommy wren squawks, shrill.
Mrs. F crawls out of the shed.
A week later, the babies and mommy wren,
in the tree outside her window, chirp in glee,
as if to tell her, “Thank you.”
Mrs. F laughs, her eyes brimming.
The birds fly away, except one.
“Go on,” Mrs. F tells it. “Join your siblings now.”
The chick gives her an enigmatic look and joins them
fly to the day moon winks. Mrs. F stares
at the empty nest in the box in her room, pondering.
She embraces the empty-nest syndrome for a little while.

©Byung A. Fallgren

white dogwood, by Pat Hope (thetwohope@aol.com)

Dogwood fairies

three fairies
on the branch
dance
for the fallen souls
in the harsh wind

©Byung A. Fallgren

In the Days of Reform

It seemed it never occurred to him
this could end everything of him,
he might have to go back, if allowed,
with odd luck.
He will lose the limbs yet intact, caged.
Insanity, cruelty, is not abnormal
to the likes of him,
it has been lurking in the narrow crack,
deep within, smoldering,
to step on the neck of others.
What hole in the system
have they overlooked to see
him, his kind, fit for the job?
Perpetrating over and over,
abusing power, unjust,
is this real?
Why are we helpless,
fearing when it will happen again,
lamenting,
ashamed for not undoing  the wrong,
tired perpetually?
Change! we shout, marching,
smile, as we go.
*

*Yes, you guessed it. I wrote this poem after the man died
in the conflict with the police officer. Then the protest
swept the nation.

©Byung A. Fallgren

Particular Moment

Like the little kid on the cross walk
avoids the moment of getting hit
by a dozing driver,
a calf prances across the road,
escaping the moment of
getting hit by the car.
The moment of life and death vanishes
with the sigh and the heart beat skipped.
Her calf by her side,
the cow throws an annoyed look
at the driver momentary absent mind,
reminding of the concern of
the moment.
Like a tiny grain of each sand
make up the whole beach,
a little sprout grows to a tree,
a second builds to a moment memorable:
a thorn or sweet scented rose.

© Byung A. Fallgren