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Three Poems by J.S. MacLean

Bluegrass Afternoon

The dory cleaves blue reeds
cattails frail idle oars
lazy wetland drone
no hoedown here…
only a funky
Appalachian June

Lagoon rippled sky
line from toe to float
down to bottle fly
while yonder Great Heron
trying patience
has no better luck than I

Corn jug and cheddar
mellow banjo tune
flat bottom picnic
on a bandanna
prow nods in rhythm
delight blue afternoon

Crawler

You embark on a branch
rotund with choices:
alcove nooks with leaves to browse,
juicy truth to peruse and devour –
until the way tightens like skin
and the twig nods to the ground.

Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle

Along sodden banks
we ooze from water tables
into a churning flood
with nothing to seize but torn trees,
roots whirling around & under.

It is a torrent deep in the gut,
ripped through the brain,
the only ways we settle out.

The arrow slays us all,
then comes back again.



J.S. MacLean is a Canadian of Celtic extraction living in Calgary Alberta close to the Rocky Mountains. He holds degrees in Geology and in Education. He has had over eighty poems published in a variety of publications in Canada, USA, UK, and Australia over the past four years. In 2007 he won 1st prize in poetry in THIS Magazine's "Great Canadian Literary Hunt". Some recent publications, or soon to be published, are in Anobium, Shit Creek Review, Centrifugal Eye, Red Ochre Lit., and Hulltown 360. He plans to publish a collection; Molasses Smothered Lemon Slices in 2012. He has served as a poetry and art editor, as well as e-publisher, of the Triggerfish Critical Review.

Copyright 2011, J.S. MacLean . © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.