Here’s the latest installment of Poet’s Corner, presented by the Edmonds-based EPIC Poetry Group.

Passengers

When we exchanged the horn of warning
For the horn preceding us (in those railcars
Lugged behind, a wake of tiny rooms in rows),
We gave away our pining for afar.

We boarded the announcement of our dream
Arriving in chords ahead of us at every road
We crossed.  The bars descend in deference,
The lights and bells all flash and clang in time
As if they are the smacks of X and O,
Stiff kisses and red hugs hung on the signs,
A warning to step back and wait in line
While we cruise by into the scenery.

We have become the people on the train
Instead of those left waving from the beach.
The engineer lets loose the wild skirl.
We hear that we are there before we are.

Kristina Stapleton

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Taking Off

Unlatch the hook and let it make
its circular arc bite deeper in the wood
as it swings free on its stern eye.
The screen door pulls the spring with twang
and you slide out the side door with a bang.

The summer creaks with insects in blind night
beyond the porchlight, past the stoop
where your brother used to smoke his dope
frantic as a moth afraid of what it wants,
he beat his wings to death on his own hope.

You bypass his trajectory of blame
to reach escape velocity and break out.
Your parents’ planetary pull not quite enough
to keep you orbiting their angry flames.
Dark side roads lure you with their ancient stars.

Kristina Stapleton

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Cat By The Fire

For Thelma

In the season of milkweed
The cotton flies from the cottonwood
and the cats shed to become sleek.

Even though the fire crowns the hearth
and the sky promises snow, not thistle,
today the house is clogged with cat hair.

An animal barely tolerant of petting
lays down, submissive to our hands
which come back furred as paws.

A storm of fur follows the old cat
as if she were a dervish, a force
centrifugal, sleeping, sleeping

an ornament by the fireside
patient as a figurine she waits,
entranced in the cyclone’s eye

her hair a halo of release
in a whirl of letting go into
a matted nest of disengagement.

She circles the drain in a bower of fluff
asleep in that vortex where
swallowed by the big dream

we all will leave our hair behind
on the combs and furniture, in corners
of the mortal house she will abandon soon.

Kristina Stapleton

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Kristina Stapleton lives in Edmonds with her blues guitar playing husband Billy, and Thelma the 20-year-old cat.  She is a regular at the Easy Speak open mic and a member of EPIC poetry group.  She was recently published in Western Friend magazine.

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The EPIC Poetry Group has been in existence for four years. It is open to the members of the public (free of charge) who are interested expressing and improving their poetry writing skills. The group meets the second Tuesday of the month at the Edmonds Library from 6-7:45 p.m.