Tag: ravine

Something in the Woods


The summer sun drawing low and gold,

Damselfly and bee have buzzed back to home;

Aspens rustling louder than footfalls on the mould

That sheets the fallowed orchard’s loam;

Standing on the verge of farms and forests

Limned by boulder and brightly blooming weeds

Whose rhythmic dance the dying breeze arrests,

Stills the squirrels, starts the blackbirds from the reeds.

What bid them silent fall? Not scent nor sight

Reveal, but to my prickling spine it’s clear

That a formless and a nameless fear

Is furtive lurking in the late-noon light.

. . .

.

Copyright © 2019 by M.G. Warenycia

Leaside Ravine

Down gully clad with grape and strangler vine,

Belted, booted, dark-clad troops in bleaching sun

Grasping weed and branch to scale the cline,

Not far from where the deeds were done,

‘Neath hickory and maple, and cicadas’ brassy whine.

Dusky ramparts shade the sheen

Of the languid, limpid river,

Now snaking silver, now unseen,

Whose murmured tales make hard men shiver.

Aspen-leaves flicker like coins in a pond;

At forest-edge a reporter guileless asks

For what they probe with spade and wand,

Cursing the sin that birthed their tasks,

While rouge-stained twilight, looming low,

Suffuses the swelter with a ruddy glow.

. . .

.

Copyright © 2018 by M.G. Warenycia

A Discovery

What’s that at which you’re peering

Amid the trailside clearing?

What’s that in the leaves,

Where the dappled glimmer cleaves

The forest’s noonday night?

.

It’s some garbage; it is nothing;

At least that’s what I’m hoping.

I don’t like how the aspens sway

Or how the flitting shadows play

In the grove’s miasmic light.

.

It’s not ours to save the day;

There’ll be a price to pay;

Drop that stick and quit your poking;

Unhallowed things you’re stoking

And our sleep will bear the blight.

.

Back away, delete the picture;

Come let’s heed the copper’s stricture,

It’s time we’d best be going;

Look – the coydogs come a’loping

And the birds are taking anxious flight.

.

The slope they’ve cordoned off

Where the earth runs damp and soft;

The sky is swiftly darkening,

We’d best be homeward harkening

And pray we don’t dream of the sight.

. . .

.

Copyright © 2017 by M.G. Warenycia