To Pursue Pegasus
Laura Maylene Walter
Orion sweeps across the sky,
searching through shadows and shattering stars.
He sweats the suns, flames his chest to terrify.
Orion finds his victim full of sparks,
and colored silver, with wings shimmering
as they move together, as they part.
Pegasus flashes and Pegasus flies
while Orion chases at her tail,
trailing silver breath and silver sighs.
Pegasus gallops to reach the moon,
but realizes too soon the closeness
of Orion, of his greed, his ruin.
Pegasus trips, the milky way curves round her hooves
to trap and cling in a star-stuck hold.
Orion winks down at her. She flinches. She moves.
He winks at her with his lusty lure
until she faces him and all the stars,
until she shines and shakes, and shakes no more.
Tree Shaking
Laura Maylene Walter
Last year my mother's cancer fell asleep
and hid away in bones and breath and skin,
only to wake again this fall, to leap
against her veins and spread as rain begins.
And I in my elm climb so high to see
this place of dark and hidden dance, where leaves
and shadows jump, not at her, but at me.
These sad green trees lie down to weep, to grieve.
But in the dark the leaves can part. This year
of shivering branches will end in dreams:
the trees are slowly shaking Mother clear
of cancer that rises away in screams.
This modest forest full of trees has caught
my mother in its shade and shadowed thought.
Ode To Ansel Adams
Laura Maylene Walter
Here is a man who stands for art
on mountaintops, snowbanks,
the bases of grey, twisting trees.
He is an image chaser, a lover of light,
a man who muscles cloud into shadow.
He crosses dry Californian landscapes
blooming with dry Californian trees,
gnarled and looming over his shoulders.
He is a man with passion and patience enough
to sit in colorless lands moon after moon,
to examine shade, and shade, and shade.
Through the rush of trees and time
is the sun moving in a black and white sky,
his eye moving in his head,
film moving in the camera.
On his back: piles, packs
of paper shining with all the colors
he lost, all the colors he found.
Here is one small man who runs to the moon
and shoots it until it is blinking and blind.
He is left with rolls of slippery sleek film
that unravel and slide across landscapes.
This man's hands drip with chemicals, sour and ripe
enough to pull shadows into glossy moments,
free of gravity and flying.