Poets Forum

HAIKU

Carolina wren scratches in chrysanthemums brown after first frost

— Sue Watson, Benton

CALICO AUTUMN

October cuts her leaves from calico

Of pumpkin-gold and purple muscadine

Like patches dipped in dyes and simmered slow

To shades of scarlet dried to berry wine.

She hazes meadows to a misty isle

Then wraps her hollows in a smoky veil

Where speckled babies waddle single file

In brown parade behind a mama quail.

October flaunts her glory on the breeze

That rustles shocks of corn in rustic rows

And coaxes clinging color from the trees

To carpet forest floors with leaf rainbows.

October is a magic month to me—

It lets a poet lose her fantasy.

— Faye Boyette Wise, Deceased

TIME

Do I have one more song

To sing—or one more Poem to write –

Or will it be just a memory

And all will become quiet?

Only in silence the answer

Will shine – it will come from

My Heavenly Father in His own time.

— Jeanette Heffington, Benton

SENYRU

Eighty-two

Feeling young Candidates my age — Cathy Parker, Alexander

NIGHT PREDATORS

Hungry predators Crave the night With eyes aglow

Hunkering from sight In a night so dark No mercy to be had Serge of energy

And another prey Is taken down.

— Amanda Smart Benton

A PLACE IN THE HEART

They say you can’t go home again, nothing stays the same; the house next door is now a bank—

time has laid a claim!

But home is where the heart is,

in a mansion or on the street;

in a house that’s built on love, with promises to keep. — Mike Pafundi, Deceased

DRIFTWOOD

I felt like a piece of driftwood floating on the sea.

The one I loved was gone

and had turned his back on me.

By now the thought of driftwood no longer bothers me, for I have found a true love

while floating on the sea.

— Mae Halbert, Bryant

HAIKU

on the deer stand floor a five-foot snake skin I slither down — Dennis Patton Alexander

To submit poems for publication, please send poems of 16 or fewer lines to Dennis Patton, 2512 Springhill Circle, Alexander, AR 72002, or patton_dr@hotmail. com. The Saline County Branch of PRA is scheduled to meet November 18, 1:00 pm, at the Parkview United Methodist Church, 514 North Border Street, Benton.