photo. Rattle Poetry Ekphrastic Challenge : Claire Ibarra Photography
Overhead a Rorschach test of brambles
Cast shadows across my pool.
There, fat goldfish beckoned the sky fall
and secret them in the amniotic fluid.
Birds, soaring over the pond,
returned to spear an exhausted fish,
floating belly up, as the in-waiting
swimming thing gasped its last palliative breath.
A fish net soon crisscrossed the pool
and stymied — natural selection.
Testily a bird rebelled. Wildly plucking at the screen
until, flying light, away it flew as
the horizon flagged the sun to rest.
The painter’s brush of lattice web
instructs viewers to remember
Fraser’s words, “Life is not meant to be easy.”
or, being yourself requires tactical grit.
Inshore Cassandra 