October 2023
Bio Note: I've authored several books, including The Ethereal Effect - A Collection of Villanelles (Kelsay Books, 2022). I find joy outdoors, taking walks, listening to birds, identifying plants, and noticing Earth’s beauty while practicing gratitude along the way. I serve as a poetry editor for the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs.
October Maize
Autumn whispered spoke softly in hushes hints of honey breaths of blush and russet as sighs of wine spilled October at our feet. We walked tread together amid reds before corals beside flushes of fall color, and nearby corn stalks stood parched high for harvest— their ears ready to reap return. Now winds rushed and leaves fluttered while others leapt off their stalks to scatter north. Overhead gulls glided hundreds flew this blue network of sky. They sailed in and out, cruised up then down, swept between clouds. We stood wide-eyed spellbound, until new views revealed strips of stalk hulls—not gulls, soaring high, dry for harvest along breezes within winds and passageways above this crop of October maize.
Originally published in Nature of it All (Finishing Line Press, 2013)
Ten
Born on October 10th at 10:10 a.m., ten fingers, ten toes, she had a tendency for tens (both the alpha and numeric kind). She was a tenderhearted woman who suffered from tendinitis and lived in a tenement with tenebrous tendencies. On weekends, she rode her ten-speed bike and played tennis. On Sundays, she sang tenor in the church choir; she was also religious and tendentiously followed the Ten Commandments. As a meat eater, she enjoyed preparing beef tenderloin, tenderizing it in her tender way. She wore her hair in tendrils, and sometimes even wore her ten-gallon hat, given to her by her Tennessee cousin, Tent (yes, Tent not Trent); though the hat was heavy and gave her intense tension headaches. She tended to dress to the tens (not the nines, she preferred the intensity of tens). And last but not least, she liked to touch it (though without a ten-foot pole) because she was also―the daring type.
Originally published in Romp and Ceremony (Finishing Line Press, 2017)
©2023 Jeannie E. Roberts
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