Elizabeth Spencer Spragins – Five Poems

Serenade

the breeze walks softly
beside a brook that murmurs
songs of spring peepers
tint the blackness of this night
with promises of bluebells

~Fredericksburg, Virginia

Rain Drops

two great-tailed grackles
strut through puddles on my lawn—
folded umbrellas
stitched with iridescent beads
shimmer in the slanted light

~Fredericksburg, Virginia

Falls

rapids roar and buck
beneath twigs riding bareback
just before free fall
I grip rigging of my dreams
and wrestle fear with one hand

~Laramie, Wyoming

Beneath

the fog meanders
over unseen stepping stones—
a garden of rocks
watered with the morning mist
flowers in this riverbed

~Rappahannock River, Fredericksburg, Virginia

Fire

soft blankets of moss
draped across the stoic stones—
a river so cold
cannot quench the crimson leaves
or tapers lit by twilight

~Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Author’s Statement on Beauty

Beauty is a magnetic quality that draws us out of our complacent selves into a joyful otherness. Hence, creating beauty requires identifying or forging connections that may be invisible or overlooked without the insights of the artist, the musician, or the writer. He or she invites each member of the audience to find an individual path that converges on this shared destination. In this sense, the creative process is essentially a means of building community, however ephemeral it may be.

Elizabeth Spencer Spragins is a linguist and editor who taught in North Carolina community colleges for more than a decade. Her tanka and bardic verse in the Celtic style have been published in England, Scotland, Canada, Indonesia, and the United States. Recent work has appeared in the Quarterday Review, the Bamboo Hut, Skylark, Atlas Poetica, and Halcyon Days. She lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia.