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ELIZABETH FLETCHER - POEMS

8/7/2019

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Picture
Elizabeth Fletcher worked for many years  as a medical editor and technical writer in the medical education field. She is now a free-lance writer. Her poems have been published in the anthology Lost Orchard, in The Plum Tree Tavern, The Swarthmorean, and the Schuylkill Valley Journal, Spring 2019 edition. Several of her essays have been published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

​Cobbs Pond Heron

​Rising silent from the woody fringes
the great heron sails above the glacier-carved lake
on slate blue wings
 He circles sun rippled waters
Slow and stately
 long black legs stretch out behind him
 like the thin swift strokes of a calligrapher’s brush
 
Implacable as Orion
the bird surveys the waters
his black plumed crest stirs in thermal air
 
Last night’s bull frog chorus
crouches below
mute
sinking into water lily shadows
iridescent green blurred by clouds of silt
 
The silent hunter glides into cool shallows
beneath an overhanging willow
The brilliant August afternoon stills
 
Patient, golden eyed
on one stalk leg he waits
for the blink of an eye 
then strikes with pterodactyl beak
the basso voiced frog

 

​Gray’s Ferry Ave

​Rust-haired girl clutches
steaming Hess Express coffee
in green striped mittens
handknit no fingers
Walks the
double yellow line
at Gray’s Ferry Ave.
 
Commuters stream by
The red light camera flashes
Still shots of the rush
etch her against the billowing gray November sky
for thunderstorm seconds
a PBS documentary in the making
 
Her English bulldogs
recline on blankets
tethered to the traffic light
chewing on bones bought at Pet Smart
with yesterday’s gleanings
 
She pours kibble into their
bowl
Strokes the brown one’s head
then steps back into traffic
She balances
inches from a metallic blue Prius
and a battered  red pickup
 
Thin-boned in shredded jeans
clasping her damp corrugated cardboard
sign to her breast
she looks dead ahead
 
 
Today the guy from Jersey in the pickup slows
sticks an arm out
Two crumpled dollars disappear
into her unlaced work boot
Her hazel eyes glimmer for a nanosecond
then
head down, straight ahead
she paces on
 
The pickup surges forward
into a burst of hot, blinding red
The robot camera
nails him
 
He curses
 
At the Hess Express across the Ave
the glass coffee pot
scortches
 
She starts her loop again

Sea Games
​

​Brown pelicans, a winged battalion
Three brothers
A triumvirate
Skimming the turquoise ocean
Long beaks tucked
Flying low
wingtip to wingtip
 
Warm Gulf waters tickle
Feathered undersides
Three bursts
Of belly Laughs
Boom
           Boom
                       Boom
Three crash dives into the waves
 
I throw myself into the sea
 Boom
            Boom
                        Boom
 
The three rise
wing tip to wing tip
Sailing
 
I am marooned 
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    ABDUL MALIK MANDANI
    ABIGAIL GEORGE
    CARL SCHARWATH
    COLIN STEIN
    DAVID MCLINTOCK
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    ERICA MICHAELS HOLLANDER
    GEORGE CASSIDY PAYNE
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    HOLLY DAY
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