by Judith Vaughn
In poet’s minds, a cascade of words streams into their lifeblood.
Expression waits for an ordinary sound, a smell, an image to burst
forth onto a white page of possibilities.
A homeless woman sitting on a city curb, street screaming, teeming
with life. Snow falls quiet-like around her nowhere to go. Twelve stories
up, a heated apartment, a poet watches tragedy unfold, translates anguish.
Words on a white page, hot with outrage, unlike cold in a winter storm.
A tall young woman, taller still by four inch red heeled boots, runs across
a city street, falls in the path of an oncoming bus. Suddenly a poet’s hand
reaches out, pulls her from certain death. Both unnamed, not forgotten,
her brush with mortality
.
People find their way through city streets to gardens nestled between tall
buildings. Brightly painted koi swim in pools surrounded by flowers and trees
and delight of the refuge found here; A poet sits on a concrete bench; sees the
overlooked, the overheard, the daily details of our lives……
© Judith Vaughn
Poetic License Sonoma 