Through Gate

By Diane Webster (November 2023)

Black Columns in a Landscape, Paul Klee, 1919

Through Gate
–
Newly-painted blue gate
stands at meadow edge.
It grasps no fence
left or right;
it exists in and of itself.
–
Visitors wander/wonder
about no trespassing,
welcome to my world.
No demand to open
the gate and pass through.
–
Will an evolved scene
fade into view as gate
opens and closes?
Is it a test
of who walks around,
who unlatches the gate?
–

Only Person Left

You wonder if you’re the only person left. Left alive. It snowed last night. Snowed heavy, quiet, a sarcophagus silence. Pristine whiteness with only your tracks destroying the smooth as you venture outside. No sparrows twitter in branches. No doves ask, “Who who who?” Dogs are afraid to bark, to cause an avalanche of tree snow to beat them into submission. Traffic? Even muffled you should hear tires waffle over streets. Or hear snowplow blades rasp across pavement in distant echoes. But you hear nothing. You close your eyes. You are back in bed snuggled in white sheets. You dream. Excited about looking out the window and seeing it had snowed. Barely able to wait for sunshine. Sunshine that never came. But it got lighter. That cloudy lightness that mimics snowfall so outside is flat from top to bottom. You dream of Christmas. The new sled you could run outside and play with today, now, right now. Coming in from the cold and standing in the kitchen where all the food was being cooked. It was hot, a welcoming hot as long as you stood in the corner and didn’t get in the way. Steam stung your cheeks as you peel off layers and leave the wet beside the door or hung on chairs to dry. You wonder if you’re the only person left. At this moment it’s glorious! At this moment you are only you! At this moment you are one!

Gravity Pulls

Gravity pulls
the waterfall
down
the mountain;
like sand
in an hour glass
descending
from top
to bottom
again
and again…
like evaporation,
snowfall,
rainfall
from the mountain
in waterfalls
from spring
to winter
Drop
by drop
like grains
of sand
eroding
into dust,
and we
all
fall down.

Falls

Clowns frown on the ground
because they covet my height
as I tightrope across. My balance
finer than floppy shoes
tripping each other in pratfalls.
No net to catch either of us,
painted-on smiles challenge
audience anticipating
both of our falls.

Small Portion

Multi-globed street lights
reach upward into the night
to plunge their brilliance
into the massive black
even just to glow
a small portion of the night.

Purple thistle blooms
stretch skyward toward
the sun blazing
upon their royal pods,
stickery but pleasant
for butterflies to pause
in search of nectar
for a moment.

Table of Contents

Diane Webster’s goal is to remain open to poetry ideas in everyday life, nature or an overheard phrase and to write. Diane enjoys the challenge of transforming images into words to fit her poems. Her work has appeared in El Portal, North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, and other literary magazines. She also had a micro-chap, Between Journeys, published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast