Two Poems by Joan Leotta

 

Behind the Nursing Home

In the artificial pond

behind the nursing home

Egret steps carefully

among the tall grasses,

hunting, hunting.

Hawk flies low across the road,

passing over egret’s

domain for the new

furrows in the farmland

just beyond—

hunting hunting.

As I turn into the back

Nursing Home’s back drive,

I spot a wrinkled face

peering out from the

rec room window

as he waits with others

for me to join him and others

to lost memories

through music and story.

As he watches

Hawk and Egret,

I notice he is

smiling, perhaps

recalling when his life

was also one of

hunting, hunting.

Natural magnificence

is the music,

story that

has restored his memories.

 

 

Shadows on a Pond

 

Weed shadows

weave a net

across pond’s surface

in the grey of soon-to-rain,

trapping my dreams in

their waving grey fronds

until the winged creature,

darker, more powerful than their net.

His triumph is apparent

in the fold of his wing

as he soars over the pond,

I see that soon he will

escape into a world of sky

above the shadows

while his shadow bathes

in the pond below

captured for a moment,

then, like the bird itself, free.

 

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Her poems, articles, essays, and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Ekphrastic Review, Pine Song, A-3 Review, When Women Write, Verse Visual, and Verse Virtual, Mystery Tribune, anti-heroin chic, Drunk Monkeys, and others. She has been a Tupelo Press 30/30 author, and a Gilbert Chappell Fellow. Her chapbook, Languid Lusciousness with Lemon, is out from Finishing Line Press. Her chapbooks Nature’s Gifts is free from Stanzaic Stylings. Dancing Under the Moon and Morning by Morning, mini-chapbooks are free through Origami Press. As a performer, she tells folk and personal tales featuring food, family, nature, and strong women.

Joan Leotta
Author, Story Performer
“Encouraging words through Pen and Performance”

Books in Print

Languid Lusciousness with Lemon, Finishing Line Press

Morning by Morning and Dancing Under the Moon, two free mini-chapbooks are at https://www.origamipoems.com/poets/257-joan-leotta 
Gifts of Nature, free chapbook on http://stanzaicstylings.blogspot.com/p/gifts-of-nature-twenty-poems-by-joan.html

For her four out of print novels, collection of short stories and four children's  picture books, contact Joan at this email  joanleotta@gmail.com