Down by the Creek
by Anne Murphy
I love an August evening in Indiana,
especially down by a sunlit creek.
The mosquitoes are big, but spray keeps them mostly at bay.
The breeze picks up as birds sing their young to sleep
and crickets say their vespers.
The ripples whisper their good night as they lazily pass me by.
I smell fish, but hear only the occasional splash as they slip out sight.
A cigarette butt sits at my feet demanding attention,
as I collect the trinkets from my visit here:
A stone, a piece of knotted wood, and a poem.
Sounds That Roll Across the Lake to Me
by Mary Sexson
A loon cries out
through the rattle
of the training wheels
on the small boy’s bike
Frogs break the surface
of the lake with barely
a whisper, the thrust of bodies
only a forward motion.
Cicadas call through
the density of trees,
over the hill covered
in emerald grass.
And the dog breaks
his silence, finally,
to let the others know
there is danger ahead.
August
By Eric Williams
August Indiana trail running
Breathing earthy invisible warm soup.
© 2016 by Eric Williams. All rights reserved.
Poem Written on the Lawrence Creek Trail
by Ian Harrison
The quiet forest exhales
Sun dappled trees in motion
Leaves drift silently like petals from the sun
Creekside Memories
by Liza Hyatt
It comes like memories of a sea.
The feeling of home
which ribbed a child’s breast.
Once there were growing bones
and salt to learn the feelings of.
Once in that sea,
birds were in waves,
waves in earth,
earth in bone,
and bone in water.
And from the sea departed a flock of birds.
And what was being lost is not lost.
Its pattern stretches inland with winter.
The creek rustles with brown, wrinkled water
and the bank is flocked with fallen oak leaves.
Gold nubs of old corn rows line the fields.
The sun stripes the dusk with yellow waves.
And the clouds are ribbed like a woman’s chest.
And what is being lost will not be lost.
Fort Ben Writers 