Poetry

General

Ravenwood

Greg Tonian, Class of 2017 – Springtime has come to Ravenhood.
Crane flies have been swarming for weeks,
Carcasses strewn throughout the house.
They seem to arrive in a frenzy, then vanish,
Arising from winter’s grasp,
Why in such haste,
Peer pressure to be the first to emerge,
To procreate?

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If I were

Greg Tonian, Class of 2017 – If I were… Poem – A reflection on a Labor Day Weekend Backpacking Adventure on the 29-mile Eagle Rock Loop In Arkansas in The Ouachita National Forest.

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Mental Wanderings

Sally Evans, 2006 – Founder & Emeritus –
A wide swath of trees and vines and junipers has grown up along the back by a creek.  The front part was mowed several times a summer but often the grasses grew knee high and swayed in the breezes.  That lot became the resting place or home for the wild life that moved up and down the creek.  Birds roosted or nested in the trees and shrubs.  In one far corner a cottonwood tree grew twice as high as the rest of the trees and became the site for hawks sunning or scanning for prey.  Flocks of birds would stop in the top branches to rest and recoup. Families of crows would convene to pester the hawks or to just the surrounding territory and then move on to another perch.   Squirrels ran up and down the trunk or leaped from branch to branch.  One December night two great horned owls sat high in the tree and called and called to some unknown recipient. And one summer a pair of Swainsons hawks nested there.  Birders said it was not probable but photos of the birds verified their site. 

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August in Cicadia

Greg Tonian, 2017
The neighborhood is abuzz.
A hot, sultry breeze,
Envelops the trees.
Brown, papier mache creatures climb out of the loam,
Clinging to brick and branch with tiny hooks,
Soon to cleave asunder,
Extruding,
winged phantasms.
I find these abandoned climbing nymph husks,
And the fanciful flying creatures that they set free
Scattered on the concrete byways of Cicadia.
“Sweet dreams and” Flying “machines in pieces on the ground” (James Taylor),
I think to myself.

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The Call of The Chattahoochee

Greg Tonian, 2017 The Chattahoochee flows from Blue Ridge Mountain
To Apalachicola Delta,
Past Helen and Suburban Atlanta.
These two places I visited,
The possibilities to explore, unlimited.

All was swell in Roswell.
Mostly Merry in Marietta.
Dallas Georgia family, also near,
Was mostly in the clear.
But like the river,
Clouded by ocassional rain,
Like the area roads,
Never without curves and dips,
Ups and downs.