By Clare Busalacchi
Amidst a field of clovers grows
A mighty green guardian, noble and bold
Lonesome he sits, sturdy and tall
One cannot help but hear his mighty call
A lost young girl enters his kingdom, she follows his song
The guardian has never seen anything so wrong
For she is broken and tattered
Her dreams have been shattered
Only for this child, scared and alone
Would he ever offer to share his glorious throne
He grants her comfort and love
Unaware that she will soon be called to rise above
So filled with joy to be no longer alone
He invites her to stay, but her soul has already flown
It is on this day, laden with rage
The mighty green guardian breaks free from his cage
The ground shakes
The earth breaks
He uses all of his strength to lay the child to rest
But he cannot bear to live above his unfortunate guest
Though he tries and he tries
He cannot budge from the place where the young child dies
He is no longer so sturdy nor tall
His limbs have grown tender, the clovers watch as they fall
Time passes, slow and cold
The guardian still grows, but his branches hang low
No longer a guardian, the green giant now only weeps
An unmarked grave, his lengthiest branch forever sweeps
A whistle in the wind, a rustle in the leaves
It is in this manner which he endlessly grieves
"I was wanting to write a full-fledged story with this material, but -- although I knew exactly how I wanted it to end -- I just couldn't seem to find a way to start it. Then one night, while I was trying to get it started, I started rhyming things together and it just took off from there and became this poem."
* * * * * * * * * *
“Leola”
by Ron Parkinson
She smelled of mildew,
wore long stiff dresses
buttoned tight against her throat,
spent recess writing reports
on the 117 books she’d read,
carefully closing the “O”,
rounding the “L”s in Leola.
Sat straight at her desk
like a fawn startled by a footstep.
Never bent to flip a spitball,
look sideways at a boy.
We passed our notes around her,
whispered thru her
as though she wasn’t there.
Then
one morning she turned to me,
slipped
me the colored advertisementshe’d torn from the library copy of "Life”.
Jane Russell in “Outlaw”.
Sultry red lips, long legs leaping
from Daisy Mae shorts,
uplift bra with shaded cleavage.
Asked me to keep it in my Civics’ folder.
By our tenth reunion she was dead.
I
often wonder
who
she was that day,alone in the library,
as she tasted the red on her mouth,
felt the sun
lay his warm hand on her leg,
looked down,
undid one button,
then another.
"I grew up in Park Falls, Wisconsin, and moved to Rhinelander in 1949 where I graduated from high school. I have lived all over the US, traveled widely abroad and played a lot of rugby. My true loves are splitting wood to keep my family warm, hunting partridge in the golden glow of fall in the Chequamegan National Forest and wandering aimlessly on in the back streets of London, England. I moved back to Rhinelander in 1989 where I began writing poetry -- the Park Falls years, my experience delivering Meals on Wheels and my shack near Glidden, Wisconsin, inspired much of my work."
