An Online Literary Journal for Poetry and Flash

Tag: simplicity

As Simple as That

Poetry by Dale Ritterbusch

My daughter sends me
a photograph of her cat, her lone cat,
lying on her bed next to two other
cats, her boyfriend’s cats
that have just moved in.

They seem to like being together,
no turmoil over the turf,
no petty jealousies
evinced as they lie there, resting
in a cat’s repose.

I think of times lying next to my wife,
just lying there, no movement,
merely an occasional touch,
a hand trailing lightly
along the arm, the shoulder.

It is as if we were cats;
nothing profound escapes our lips,
nothing of importance
to communicate, to fill the silence.

What is profound is the silence,
the touch, the recognition
that this space is filled,
that words are an unnecessary encumbrance
like an additional blanket
when we are already warmed enough.


Dale Ritterbusch is the author of four collections of poetry. He recently retired as a Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. His creative work is currently being archived in the Department of Special Collections at La Salle University.

The Turning

Poetry by Bonnie Demerjian

Sing a song of summer’s end —
crickets in the grass
katydids seesaw away while
locusts buzz of shortened days.
Half moon in the evening sky
veiled with trailing cloud
while the winds shush through the weeds
All restless, so restless.

The cats play ambush in the grass
heedless of the gathering dew.
In the field the dry corn stands
waiting, waiting.

Summer gathers in her skirt
apples, pears and grapes,
fragrant asters plump with bees,
sheaves of scraping insect song, and
waves of birds as they depart.

With a long and backward glance,
step by step she leaves us
soon to sink her body down.
Autumn, it’s autumn.


Bonnie Demerjian writes from Alaska. She has written as journalist and as author of four books about Alaska’s history, human and natural. Her emerging poetry and flash work has appeared in Alaska Women Speak, Tidal Echoes, Bluff and Vine, and Blue Heron Review.

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