July 2017
I returned to my birthplace in the Midwest after living in Appalachia for most of my adult life. I earned my living as a librarian, but have always been a poet on the side. My poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Snapdragon, and Anti-Heroin Chic. You can find out more at https://peggyturnbull@blogspot.com
Encounter
On Halloween Day,
led astray by a path
hidden under oak leaves,
a puzzled hiker stands
among a herd of deer who stare,
reproachfully, at the stranger
invading their terrain.
She begs their pardon,
“I’m lost!” Two wild turkeys
strut toward a broken fence.
She follows, the view opens
to rusty hills across the canyon.
Quiet as decay she sits,
blends into the earth.
The pigeon-colored sky
is soft and inexplicably asks
for her prayer. She adores
the beauty here, scours
her being. A wish wells
within. The desire she’s carried
for years leaks out.
And it echoes. A vision of wrecked lives
spins in space. A fizzled balloon.
She follows trail blazes
to leave, soon loses her way
again, the unspoken prayer
an ungainly burden to hump out.
She stumbles among unfamiliar trees.
The deer stay out of sight.
© 2017 Peggy Turnbull
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF