Poetry and Prose
Nancy Morrison
“Beautiful art celebrates life, hang some on your wall.”
Wintertide
By Nancy L. Morrison ©
The bitter breeze carries on its back an augury of wintertide…
Auburn leaves take their leave of barren bough, swirling now, swooping low, lightly land on fallow ground.
No more gaiety of fragrant bloom and blossom, withered stem, petals gone, verdant green now faded brown.
A melancholy cacophony sifts down from steely sky, a symphony retreat, a resonance of sorrow, a solemn goodbye.
And swiftly now, the sun is carried to its distant home, the afternoon, foreshortened, now a somber afterglow.
Coyotes’ wordless longing plaintively mourn, scarlet buck brush rustles deep with stories old, forlorn.
Smoke rises, eddies, lingers, above fieldstone fireplace, leaving solace at the fireside and mysteries in its wake.
The bitter breeze carries on its back an augury of wintertide…
An augury of wintertide.
Summer’s Song
By Nancy L. Morrison ©
Soft summer air swirls in my windows bringing sweet languorous scents of lilac, petunias and wildrose.
Meadowlarks and robins complacently visit, content with life on Indian Creek, and on such a day as this.
Impossibly cerulean skies stretch out endlessly over the horse pasture valley and touch infinity over Broken Leg Coulee.
From beyond the old log barn clearing, lazy sociable nickers insinuate themselves in my hearing.
I am lulled into paradise.
Flickering sunlight filters in through the big elm tree and warms the tom on the windowsill as he takes his leave,
Whiskers atwitch with memories of the night, his tail wrapped like a stole around him tight.
Dust motes sparkle in the air and I reach up, a remembered move from my youth, trying to touch,
Wondering where they have traveled from to arrive in my aura this day.
I suck the paint off the camel hair, savoring the flavor of burnt umber, and swirl and twirl the rainbow kaleidoscope in the mason jar.
Musing unconsciously, weighing the relative merits of Hooker green or viridian, I linger over the decision.
Reaching up slowly, unaware, bBlot the moisture off my forehead with the back of my hand.
Hooker green, then.
Lushly opulent iris gleam damply from the easel board. Lushly opulent iris gleam damply in the Waterford. Waterford on Navaho.
A snuffle, a scuffle, a sigh, a silence, a snore. Settling back into dreams once more, old doggie dreams on Navaho.
A lazy aimless buzzing in the air, landing on hanging chaps in quest of nectar.
Faintly horsy, evocative of shared treasured rides, but never sweet, those chaps move me back in time to tableaus treasured like jewels in my mind.
Snapshots of action, stretched flanks, heaving sides, flaring nostrils, imagined foes. Poetry on four fleet feet.
The buzzing buzzes off, unsatisfied. I sigh, satisfied.
They Draw Me…
By Nancy L. Morrison ©
Creased and old, chaps hanging stiff on the nail, they draw me…
Cutting out calves, sorting pairs, trailing steers.
Old corrals, broken gates, busted down barns, they draw me…
Galloping light-footed, light-hearted, taking fences at a lope.
Worn-down boots, scuffed and marred, they draw me…
Riding loose reined, jingling spurs, hats pulled low.
Dried stiff quirts, broken bridle reins, whang leather, they draw me…
Tipping hats, shaking hands, keeping words.
Rusted spurs, coiled ropes, dry weathered saddles, they draw me…
Shaking out loops, front footin’, tying hard and fast.
Brittle curled photographs, long gone men, long dead horses, they draw me…
Gallant cavaliers of the range living free, riding hard.