Tag: wonder

Posted on in Fiction

Bucket List, Eigth Wonder of the World, Lipica Pastures

From Peggy McGivern’s solo show ‘Beyond the Iron Curtain,’ verse by Peter Stravlo, Opening Reception March 20, 6-9pm, Abend Gallery, Colfax and York, Denver, CO. Eastern European Folk inspired music by Mark Dudrow and Chipper Thompson
http://abendgallery.com/html_shows/15-peggy-mcgivern-solo/

Bucket List
The day arrived, dawn white as her hair
Split-rail corrals, giddy soaring spirit
Manure loving
Strict anticipation
Training massive
Lipizzaner stable
Muscles stretching intimidate
Trot to cantor and walk and rein hold up not that much!
Buck and fall
Get back in the saddle wobbly legs
Post and knees and power and majesty
Exhausted smile checked off the Bucket List

Eighth Wonder of the World
As if a herd of mythic white horses gallop by, their little babies black so they cannot be missed. It can only be a child’s fantasy of the divine, their manes riding air that cannot keep up, wild eyes gazing out majestically from some heroic epic. They hug each other at full speed, not deigning to touch the earth, flanks flexing beyond any power of muscle, delicate legs that cannot possibly support such lofty expectations in perfect balance, hooves swirling with unearthly grace in a fog of childish conjuring.
The delightful image rests calmly on the eye. It must be impossible, these Lipizzans, royal steeds born black skinned turned magically white for such a vision. The Eighth Wonder of the World.

Lipica Pastures
A most unexpected pleasure
The Slovenian countryside

Invigorating a path to springtime
With imagical odors of decaying soil

Grain-gold humid and
Black as a fresh colt

Leading like a labyrinth to her bucket list
In Lipica pastures

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Posted on in Fiction

Field Workers Cabins, Those Silly Trees, Bird Watching

From Peggy McGivern’s solo show ‘Beyond the Iron Curtain,’ verse by Peter Stravlo, Opening Reception March 20, 6-9pm, Abend Gallery, Colfax and York, Denver, CO. Eastern European Folk inspired music by Mark Dudrow and Chipper Thompson
http://abendgallery.com/html_shows/15-peggy-mcgivern-solo/

Field Workers Cabins
The field workers cabins appeared around a façade of forest, ambled in the clear-cut, curving up up and away over a denuded landscape. Gray wood planks like chicken coops, troughs sloshing with river water. Maybe there had been a fire. Only two faces revealed themselves through the windows, lined and ashen, fearful, shirtless despite the chill. We imagined a sickness, a reason to be there, to look like that. We backed up, turned around, exited the muddy ruts we came in on. Or was it our own reflection we did not want to recognize, a sickness, a reason to be there, to look like that.

Those Silly Trees
Unusual shapes are disconcerting
Tones slightly different than your comfort zone

Walking under thin branches makes you skittish
Brittle sticks swaying wide and leafless over your head

So open your eyes, your ears, let the foreign air seep into your pores
Step by step, a few blocks, pause to take in the view, reminiscent of a childhood memory

You think the dining room walls would look great in those colors
Now you are in stride

A breeze plays with the branches
Their song stuck in your head

Those Silly Trees will flourish in your backyard

Bird Watching
Why, when we learned to fly, were feathers not part of the equation?
No flapping quick quick quick or one graceful slow manipulation of air soaring the miracle of feathers into wings.
All those elongated foreheads so soft and innocent like a child you want to reach out and run your fingers.
Beaks smelling and pecking and part-time feet hopping and jumping, but not a plane bouncing rubbery to a stop.
Primary colors much deeper than that.
In awe. A-gape. Agape.
The hair on my arms stand up but I do not leave terra firma.
Birds are not communists or capitalists nor do they share our religions.
Though it is impossible to imagine them without spirit.
My balding head white calves extra chin the curve of my paunch I insist on paving the ground and still wear shoes and the miracle is; we too are the same everywhere.