ONE STRAY       One paw below one empty mouth. One turn before it all comes down. One breath. One chance. One thin line between. One loss. One little soul in fur.   © 2007 Ronda Lawson

RIPPLES it is simple sacred that we should wish to live with grace, die with no less than that mouths of souls yawn unknown bleak scratching no surface, no ashen trail to speak of passing some have tried art war the hedonistic and the holy ripples only on a pond (c) 2005 Ronda Lawson

Seattle Sonnet I want to go again and stand. To go to all the places that before I didn’t know, but now know well enough at least to nod in passing recognition. Seeing all the odd but now oddly familiar quirks of place that gave the city, from within, its unique face mirrored in the sun. Once then, I had a wish to see Pike’s Place, and watch a fish go flying. And a dream; to cross the Sound and share with gulls the skyline curving round. I had not thought to stand against the wind and watch an island near, and call it friend; or stand along a pier and lift my hand to wave at waves that tiptoe to the land. I wonder, in my absence, what will change. Would I now go to some café and find it strange? The art gone from the walls? The sparrow who delighted me now flown? I knew before I came here, I would find more memories in the making than the kind of well-bred visiting I planned. I now abhor the thought of things that are no more; the places where I slept and drank and ate are somehow sacred. Most of all I hate the thought that when I do return I’ll be a stranger, and will have to learn to love Seattle all over again. -(c) 2000 Ronda Lawson

The Closet Poet I wore my favorite jeans and thirty-year-old cowboy boots, still good, and asked you if you thought I looked the way you thought a poet should. You said you didn’t know what poets looked like, and I wondered if I dressed my nakedness so well that we no longer saw me. I could tell my mirror showed the eyes of me, so I put on my lipstick, with that age-old puckered face that women get and for a small reflected space forgot what we were looking for and saw instead the stains inside. It’s all just costumes, I suppose, and now I finger through my clothes and wonder, should I wear Ralph Lauren or a sonnet? You said that I looked fine. I’ll take your word for it, I think, instead of mine, because you were so honest and you don’t know how a poet looks. I thought I did, but mirrors lie, like photographs and lovers’ eyes, and I don’t know what poets look like either. And it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ll dress in vintage verbage and we’ll go and face the day. And eventually I’ll see myself as cold and bare and stark as any well-dressed poet does alone and in the dark. (c) 2004 Ronda Lawson