Three Poems by Susan Dale

San Francisco to Seattle

Cathedrals of Redwoods
Whispers of mist
Circles of clouds
Sighing across the skies

Fog moving in -- fog moving out
The cold thunder of the Pacific
Pine-arms uplifted to the heavens

Waltzing with the Pacific off to the side
A dance of tides
Weather-beaten shanties huddled together
Shivering in the rainy gloom

Green, green; gleaming green

Skies through the branches
Pools of sunlight
Meadows weaving garlands
Of foxgloves and roses
Winks of poppies
Golden flashes of broom
Ribbons of daisies
Mosses rushing to cover all

Mountains rising through the mist
Rock beds dotting rivers
Carpets of moss smothering forest floors
Fern fronds
Buttercups hop-scotching down hillsides
Indian drumbeats echoing across streams

Streams rushing to rivers
Rivers flowing into lakes
Lakes flowing to the ocean
The Pacific waving greetings to the Atlantic
Watery arms joining to embrace the earth


Slices of Spring

Wave willow fronds
Your tender green arms
         To spring

          *****

A thin coat of color
On the cold stare
         Of Winter
         
           *****

Overlapping of colors
        White to shy
To green-eyed spring

          *****

Ink sketches of branches
             To
Wide-shouldered trees

          *****

The moon full
with sacred rite
The sacred rite
      of spring

          *****

Spring wings
    a' chirping
through the clouds

         *****

With rainy eyes
And pink-slipper feet
Spring dances
      over the hill


The Song is Gone

A 60's waltz
the song
     slipped into quietus
The dancers gone too
Their footprints washed away
by the heartbeat of a lake, persistent,
          ever flowing onwards

We danced our days across the Lake's currents
Rainbow seashells, driftwood sculptures
Broken glass scrubbed gentle

Behind this rock, that
water chants
answered with a chorus of remembering
Walking across thin sands of seaweed and bloated fish
to grimace our way into rocky waters
And further
swimming
     past a broken pier
          into a sunset horizon
               falling into twilight rising

Slivers of shadows creeping thin
The soul of remembering
Wrapped tight in the tides of yesteryear

Susan Dale's poems and fiction are on Kind of a Hurricane Press, Ken*Again, Penman Review, Inner Art Journal, Feathered Flounder, Garbanzo, and Linden Avenue.  In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan.  She has two published chapbooks on the internet:  Spaces Among Spaces by languageandculture.org and Bending the Spaces of Time by Barometric Pressures.