My Edmonds News is pleased to present the second installment of a new feature, Poet’s Corner, presented by the Edmonds-based EPIC Poetry Group.

(small town embrace)

We walk down Main Street

hands clasped, fingers entwined

each shop flaunting its wares

 

the movie theater, one screen

showing “Bambi” again

never tiring of the themes

 

lost innocence and matricide

we step into the café

where they know our order

 

two demitasses are placed before us

foamy milk hearts

hiding a rich dark brew

 

onward past the bookstore

we eyeball the offerings, best sellers

plotting birthday gifts and book club reads

 

open doors of the travel store

lure us in to update our baggage

browse adventure: Belize, Tahiti

 

tropical musings to which we easily succumb

but we live here in this small town

and know nothing of paradise

 

Cynthia Hénon

~ ~ ~ ~

in which the poet becomes a bird

I folded my ego into triangles
like a flag and laid it down
in a ponderous pine box
away from prying eyes and crowbars

insults and abasements
slid off my feathers
back into the murky pond
pushed deeper by my black webbed feet

born again a swan
so regally white you’d think it braggadocio
but my meals were humbly gathered
straight from the slippery mud

Cynthia Hénon

~ ~ ~ ~

The Word of the Day is Lark

The word of the day is lark

I won’t lower myself to rhyme it
as the day goes on the wing

there’s a stillness-  her dawn song shrill yet sweet

reminder of rough and tumble summer days which stretch out time
a bottomless pitcher of fresh lemonade
water fights, music in the shade
smell of cut grass and sycamore

until night lasts forever
and lark song awakens you from the dream

Cynthia Hénon

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Cynthia Hénon is a poet and yoga teacher in Edmonds. She participates in the monthly EPIC Poetry Group and her work can be found in their recent anthology, Soundings of the Salish Sea. She won her first award, an Honorable Mention, in the Write on the Sound (WOTS) poetry contest in 2018.