by Lynda Gene Rymond
Nearly unnameable colors press upon my heart. The silver-brown of Diego’s eyes, his rectangle
goat pupils glow with benevolent courage, the green-violet thumbs of asparagus erupting from
sandy soil, chaste lavender-pink of my cold fingers wielding the root knife. Lapis-tanzanite of
swallow wings and peach-buff of their underbellies. Sanguine-scarlet heads of the British soldier
lichen devour the log ends of our cedar gates, the viridian-onyx feathers of Pirate Jenny and
Halfpint as they scratch spent hay and devour the umber-gray scattering pill bugs. A threat-black
military transport flies low over my husband as he strides in his bee suit to a wind-thrown hive.
War is not here but its cogs and hammers now tense and click in every zone. My neighbor’s
poultry, gold-glinting as pocket-watches, are loosed like a dare to red-tailed hawks and sooty-
legged foxed, yet they live this day. If I could grip this small colorless invisible peace, could break
and pass it like honey-dripped bread to those who might not taste such again. Even now the
bees find red maple flowers and fly the pollen home in scarlet-orange bundles. Bundles. So many
carrying bundles.
Lynda Gene Rymond has been runner-up for Bucks County Poet Laureate in 2019 and 2021 and a finalist in 2020. She has poetry appearing in the Schuylkill Valley Journal, Heron Tree Review, U.S. 1 Worksheets, and the anthology Carry Us to the Next Well (Kelsay Books, 2021.) Her short story “Turn, Turn” won the 2020 Pennwriters short story competition. She authored the children’s books The Village of Basketeers and Oscar and the Mooncats (Houghton Mifflin). She lives on Goblin Farm in Applebachsville, Pa.
