ruby-eyed beauty

swimming in dappled shadow

takes my breath away

Scary Poem

                                by Ralph Fletcher

​I’m afraid of one poem,

the verbs that creak and moan.

That one frightens me

​from the first simile.

​One haunting metaphor

​strikes fear to my core.

​I’m deeply disturbed

​by one vicious verb. 

​The rhymes of that verse

​make me fear the worst.

No use pretending:
I d-d-dread the ending. 

Family Photo

              by Ralph Fletcher

One last picture

before we head off

in different directions.

One last group of

all of us, smirking,

with rabbit ears.

Three generations,

kids on shoulders,

a baby cousin on my lap.

And in the middle

Grandma and Grandpa

who started all this.

We’re all ripples in a pond

spreading out

from a stone they threw.

Grandpa

                  by Ralph Fletcher

I remember Grandpa.

He’d get up early with me,

made me “alien pancakes”

that were yeah you guessed it

out-of-this-world delicious.

I remember Grandpa.

We were always outside.

He took me to the pond

when the first peepers

erupted in early spring.

I remember Grandpa.

He concocted wild tales.

          His true stories were great

          and his fake stories  

          even better.

          I remember Grandpa.

          He taught me how to sew ties

          before we’d go trout fishing:

If you make ‘em right  

they’ll last forever

like my memories of Grandpa.

Great Blue Heron

                    by Ralph Fletcher

Even when we walk up close

he pays no attention to us

as he walks along the shore

peering into shallow water

looking for some juicy crab

or unsuspecting sushi.

He looks like a dorky teacher

teaching advance algebra,

all eyes and bones and beak,

lecturing to invisible students,

hungry for that one moment

when he will get across his

                                                point.

  

The Man-Cloud

                                by Ralph Fletcher

In a buzzing morning meadow

when the sun was not yet high

I thought I saw a man-cloud

walking in the sky.

My brother saw it differently.

He told me with a laugh

that what I’d seen was actually

an ice-skating giraffe.

“Can’t you see the way he’s gliding?

With those long legs see him striding?

I distinctly see a tall giraffe

walking in the sky.”

I didn’t stop to disagree

or tell him he was wrong.

I saw a man-cloud walking,

and wished to go along.