You’ll see our plane get closer and closer
to the ground, and then the Lion will help
with two bounces and a roar with which
we can sing along, two bounces and then
a long feline growl, so we are ready when
Kahului spreads beneath us, the worrisome
clatter erased with our chant and rumble
as we laugh into Maui’s moist heaven,
a private joke we still reprise arriving
anywhere, Barcelona or Oakland – God,
how young we were – long before our faith
could rest on the small pebbles of calculus
the Lion was our rock – bounce, bounce, roar
I still tell myself sliding safely back home,
an impromptu balm for a child now my own
prayer of arrival, that touchstone, that abode.
George Perreault has been a visiting writer in Montana, New Mexico, and Utah. His 4th collection, Bodark County, is comprised of voices of character living on the Llana Estacado in West Texas.
Dear Reader, Who knew that a can-can dancer from the posters of Toulouse Lautrec would…
Eternal Return A crocus from the rotting flesh of a hedgehog, placed with the pansies…
Full Moon at Montmartre Claudette’s a can-can girl high-kickin’ it under the red windmill. She…
In the Light of Peace --painting by Bruce King of the Oneida Nation The travelers…
A Quad of Golden Shovels Internal Conversation at the beginning of Winter Wet and beautiful…