Swimmers

At dawn on a breath-stealing day
we took coffee and chocolate milk
and mangoed oatmeal to wood chairs
by the creek. Our hair feathered
in the breeze like dandelion fluff
in the last swish of coolness
before the north wind fired up the valley.

An otter family tumbled sleek brown bodies,
splashed among rocks. Fish flicked silver
in the white sun of noonday.
As finches dipped beaks in a drying bird bath
three small boys yipped and shrilled
like parrots in the wild of the creekbank.
Flung water, smelly sneakers, deflated balls.

The western sun slanted apricot rays
through cottonwoods. Over the bridge
pedaled a mother and daughter in red helmets.
Just before dinner you followed me, long towel
trailing through road dust. Showed your doting elder
the fine points of dog paddle and float.

Dark drove the humans away. Bullfrogs
bellowed upstream and down. Cats
paced a final prowl before lock-up.
In the moon-gleaming night I awoke
to a deer splashing under my window,
hooves clattering on river rock.
The water slid to river, to sea, owls muttered.



Published in Apple Blossoms at Eye Level, Poets Corner Press, 2002



Double Image

Frida Kahlo's Self-Portrait with Monkeys, ca. 1938

The man hoists his five-year-old
to shoulders burly in Hawaiian print.
Chin resting on his crown,
her straight pale hair mingles
with the beard curling brown.

Absorbed in Frida Kahlo&Mac226;s portrait,
her face framed by monkeys
whose too-long arms
clasp and claim the artist,
he holds his daughter safe.

The pair, unaware
of the picture they make,
turn away, turn back,
eyes trapped
by Frida's sad substitute.



Published in Thunder Sandwich #25, 2005



Real Estate
           --thanks, LH

I ask, why would a spider
deconstruct a web?
I've seen many webs built,
never one demolished.

This morning I watched a garden spider
at the heart of its huge construction--
one outrigger line stretched ten feet
from pine branch to alder. The spider
with meticulous pincers gathered up strands,
clustered then snipped them loose
to drift over the creek on a breeze.
Now and then she would spin
a new filament, link to a different area.
Within two hours half the web was gone.

You, my biologist friend, imagine
this was some kind of orb weaver spider.
Her goal, make the web invisible to insects.
She changes the links in her fine-threaded chain,
aims for the realtor's three major selling points--
location
location
location.



Published in BlackWidow's Web, 2006



Those same fingers

that clasped a jackknife and sliced
close to the hunted bone

that crimped around sterling
to slide under foods crumbled with herbs

that twisted the rope and hung a child's
board swing from a sycamore

that held two pipe wrenches and replaced
hundred-year-old plumbing

Those same fingers
clutch in the remembered way

but the silver slips out of the hand
envelopes flutter and fall to the floor

fingers cling tight to a walker
grope for a solid surface

Stroke my skin





© Patricia Wellingham-Jones

Bio: Patricia Wellingham-Jones, a former psychology researcher and writer/editor, is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work is published in numerous anthologies, journals, and Internet magazines, including HazMat Review, Red River Review, Rattlesnake Review, Phoebe, A Room of Her Own, The Raintown Review, Ink & Ashes and Ibbetson Street. Recent chapbooks include Don't Turn Away: Poems About Breast Cancer (PWJ Publishing), Hormone Stew (Snark Publishing) and Voices on the Land (Rattlesnake Press). Her website is http://www.wellinghamjones.com