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On southern prairies
in the lean ribs of winter
the wrens fall from the trees,
oaks, mainly, or mesquite,
the brown leaves of their bodies
tumbling. You never know
where the cold wind will push them,
if it will be, capricious, near the brittle thatch
where the hungry tomcat waits.
You only know, somehow,
their song has stilled somewhere
in the brown and gray mottle of their throats
and they have realized the nearness
of death. The vulnerable underbelly of life;
faith, yes faith, is the only redeemer
of the world and without it -- well . . .
~
There are warm days when I dash from my office oblivious.
There are days when the winter wrens, the dry grass
and the prowling cat
don't exist but slowly and far away, yet others
I return to my desk, jot the bones of a poem or,
without any rhyme or reason,
just drop down and pray.
by B. S. Allen
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B. S. Allen, 49, resides on a small farm in the hill country of central Texas.
Self-educated in the artform, the love of nature and mankind, and their
kinship to a higher Power, are the cornerstones for her writing.
"If a writer can evoke, by the use of imagery and sound, an
enlightenment of unexpected emotion from the reader; this universal
connection: unfettered feeling, and the beauty transcends the barriers we
have set for ourselves and our fellow man, it is then, and only then, that
the writer has earned the title, Poet. Whether I achieve this title or not,
I leave judgment to you, the reader."
- --B.S. Allen, 10/26/99
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