|
Home
Current
Issue (Autumn 2007)
Summer
2007
Spring
2007
Winter
2007
Autumn
2006
Summer
2006
Spring
2006
Winter
2006
Fall
2005
Summer
2005
Editor's
Note
Guidelines
SNR's
Writers
Contact
|
Intersecting
lives
The
moment has them
at
their various junctures
under
the discipline of the traffic light.
Three
teenagers barricaded
in
a bouncing red Civic
bristling
with sound.
Directly
across
an
urgent, up-thrust pickup
inching
impatiently forward
Quickening
a mother at the crosswalk
alternately
holding and hustling
two
anxious children
Apprehensive
of a semi,
a
road-width apart, looming large.
Time
the oppressor.
And
shuffling along
with
his possessions piled
in
a squealing cart
A
scruffy man,
unprotesting,
with
no place to go.
|
|
Harbor
seal
Grunting
imperatives
like
a gluttonous Roman
emerging
from his bath,
a
seal hauls his rippling length
from
the ocean,
where
he has been gorging,
up
on to the largest
of
a group of rocks.
arranged
like sofas.
Lounging
indolently,
he
contemplates the squabble,
as
companion bulls and cows
appropriate
nearby rocks,
growls
contentedly,
shifts
his fleshy length,
snorts,
barks softly,
and
finally -
sleeps.
|
|
Ode
to a television set
Dormant
vaguely
threatening
one
eye
mirror
to
dark
shapes
moving
in
a
dim room.
Gray
lives
circumscribed.
Contained.
Until
awakened
to
become
mother
bird,
silently
sipping
at
the cable outlet,
dipping
with
long
coiled straw
into
a brew
concocted
of
brighter lives.
And
hungry
we
gather
in
our living rooms
anxious
to feed
on
the thin
insubstantial
fare
regurgitated
to
feed
our
whetted
appetites.
Lacking
true
nourishment
we
are stunted
limited
in
our understanding
of
the richer reality
unable
to grow
unable
in a real way
to
take wing.
|