Leslie Dong lives on a small acreage near the tiny Sierra foothill town of Copperopolis. She shares the house with one husband, two teenage daughters and a bunch of aggravating cats. The horses, ducks, geese, rattlesnakes and other critters are relegated to the outdoors but are, nonetheless, a big part of her life. She is absolutely immersed in the reading and writing of poetry. Her poems are generally serious but she likes to laugh a lot. In her spare time she teaches second grade.
Blessed one
I come to call
Continue up and upward
The summit reached
This has been the oddest year
From the ground
Please excuse me while I investigate
Wings drawn close
"Here to me! Here to me!" my husband cries
Sixteen acres of shale-strewn hills and dreaming oaks
"What's for dinner?"
I'm not kidding when I say
Watched from the kitchen window,
They surround me
Are we divided by a whisper or a world?
divinity
spirit of this dreaming place
smiles among the shadows of deep-shouldered oaks
the shaggy-fisted dance of digger pines
her ghost-songs winding silently
through hills of shale and serpentine
take the path that twists its zigzag way
loops beneath the looming tilt of headstone rocks
their dour faces spangled with the laughing bright
of lichens -- ochre, lime and salmon shades
such cheerful epitaphs
incongruous yet fitting well
within these haunted manzanita realms
now surrounded by the deep-voiced souls of trees
sheltering the younger rustlings of the dust-bloomed scrub
while my sly-footed goddess
shifts and whispers through their redolence
a step ahead
just out of sight
yet constantly before my eyes
heat-shimmered hide and seek
a modest thirteen hundred feet above the sea
I stop to catch my breath
view the vast sweet waltzing of the Sierra range
beckoning across the fullness of the planetary curve
the miles that separate these mountains from myself
so laden with the gold of air and sun
that it would seem an easy leap
from here to there...
HOVERING
an entire twelve months
of upward journeyings
beating my wings in place
an exact mile above my life
alone
and for the first time looking,
really looking,
at this tumbled landscape
I'm a dot against the blue expanse
while from the surface of the daytime moon
my hesitating wingspread
melds invisibly against the earth
yet I can see both earth and moon quite clearly
from my new fulcrum between worlds
as well as the occasional sparkle of irresistible movement
from three hills away
the stoop
the plunge
a heedless, joyous bolt from the blue
the raucous race of air through feathertips
jesses snap and stream
freedom
he swings his lures with confidence
certain I will bank and wheel
yes, another mid-flight alteration
from this wind-shimmered course
to return along worn and familiar lines
home
cedar-lapped house peers at its reflection in the pond
green, fish-shadowed water lined with rustling cottonwoods
my daughters shout and wave a silly, splashed greeting
mares doze and loaf in the lower field
bean plants clamber up bamboo poles
windchimes murmur among the roses
quilt billows on the line
cat smiles from the porch rail
dishes in the cupboard
books on the shelf
that sometimes I get so frustrated with my good fortune
that I could tear my own heart out
and eat it
MYSTERY
five geese stride heavy-footed up the path from pond to house
yesterday there were six
last week --- seven
I go outside and crouch down to their level
bathrobe trailing in the dust
deafening honks, snaking necks
the rattle of shivered feathers
I foolishly exhort them to tell me, please, what happened?
what took the others? bobcat? coyote?
five silent geese glare back
blue eyes reveal nothing
then once again they fill the air
with gabblings of enraged recriminations
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway 1997. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for
copyright information.
Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to their
original work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author.
Copyright © Leslie Dong, 1997.
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