A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

Two poems by Cynthia Good

Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

 

The Visitor

 

Not sure I’ve ever seen her, but the dog food bowl

is empty this morning and her fresh dark prints

paint the white wall out back. She jumps down

 

at night. I may have seen her once on the hill,

a wild cat, tail thick as a squirrel’s, color of

the mountain. I think of her on Tuesdays at 2pm

 

as the women play dominos near the pickleball court,

their faces reflected in pickleball-blue, laughing

and chatting. Alone on my balcony, I imagine her

 

perched over the roofline staring down at me,

eavesdropping on Tchaikovsky, Piano Trio               

in A Minor. I think about her clawing her way 

 

in her refuge of rocks above the Pacific, slipping

into my kitchen for leftovers, wandering

ledge to ledge in total darkness or torrential

 

rain or brazen daylight, chasing mice

over jagged edges, the sun darting orange

light into her eyes. No one will know

 

whether she survives the season, until enough

time passes that someone like me looking up

at the mountain will notice she’s no longer there

 

sprinting from rattlesnake to scorpion, deft,

on her own to find water in the desert, the low

amber moon’s heavy crescent on her back.

Whale Watching, La Laguna San Ignacio, Mexico

The walking paths are crushed white shells

Rattling like chains under your step

As wind wheezes through haggard palms

 

On this cold March morning. You’re wearing

All your clothes, two t-shirts, three sweaters,

A windbreaker. At the Ignacio Springs B&B

 

They serve sweet lips fish for dinner, rosé

And Costco lemon pie. On the lagoon

Today a grey whale steered her 40-ton body

 

To place her face in your hand, an inch

Below her left eye, and you felt chosen.

Just 100 whales stay for now as the others go         

 

To Alaska for the summer. A dozen came

To the panga, swimming around, beside

And beneath us, their babies, gliding

 

And rolling, mothers rubbing their barnacles

On the bottom of the boat as you trailed

Your toes in the water idling, chosen.

 

And shells on the packed sand spiraled

Into chandeliers, and on the long tope

Filled dirt road back, you sailed, exhausted

 

From three days of travel, back to the owls,

Roosters and stray dogs barking, the usual

Out of town evening water sounds. You sleep

 

In a yurt, under a circus ceiling, beneath

Blue and white flowered sheets listening

To the bed springs through your pillow.

 

And through the window you, chosen, watch

The moon cellophane the river as the last

Of the green-winged teal splashes into night.

 

Cynthia Good, an award-winning poet, author, journalist and former TV news anchor, has written six books including Vaccinating Your Child, which won the Georgia Author of the Year award. She has launched two magazines, Atlanta Woman and the nationally distributed PINK magazine for working women. Her poems have appeared in journals including Awakenings, Free State Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Main Street Rag, Persimmon Tree, Pedestal Magazine among others. Cynthia’s new chapbook, What We Do with Our Hands, from Finishing Line Press will be published this summer.

Two poems by Joe Bisicchia

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