‘Creek Onions’ & ‘Damp Woodland Earth’

Sarah E N Kohrs / As a photographer, Sarah E N Kohrs contributes to Foundation for Photo/Art in Hospitals. Her artwork is in CALYX, Culinary Origami, Genre: Urban Progenitor, The Sun, Quibble, Voices de la Luna, and more. Sarah has a BA from College of Wooster and Virginia teaching license in Latin and Visual Arts. http://senkohrs.com.

Creek Onions

Bubbles and babbles
on flatstones and shale
with splashes and dribbles
that climb up the banks with
dirt softened to mudpots where
creek onions grow tall
hoof prints and paw prints
sunk deep in the earth while
squirrels and chipmunks
scamper over
the windfallen tree trunks
that give them a bridge
from this side to that
up above the gurgle
and the gush of
blue-green translucence
that flows from
nowhere and streams
to somewhere spilling
into rock-split channels
all the time
burnishing and polishing the
stones left over from
the dinosaurs

but shallow pools still form
their surfaces peppered with
wide-legged water striders
and leaves dropped by the trees
the leaves that sink and
carpet the creek bed pools
sealing each basin and
keeping it deep and
bubbles and gurgles rise up from the muck
no matter how hard
the leaves try to stop them
still the water
bubbles and babbles
on flatstones and shale
it splashes and dribbles
up onto the banks where
the creek onions grow tall
and life sinks its
tracks down
deep in the earth.

Damp Woodland Earth

For the lingering scent of
damp woodland earth
after a storm and
the stinging stink of ozone from the mountaintop
lightning strikes all just
wisps of smoke without a flame
for the squish of damp moss and mud
sliming out from under my boots
the tracks that sink and
then pop back out from
the damp moss and mud
deep within the woodland earth
for that lingering scent
accompanied by soft piano plinks
from a piano that
doesn’t exist still the
perfect accompaniment to the
flutes and clarinets of the
wild birds’ songs and the
soprano songs of the eagle
surveying the valley
we all watch the eagle
from inside the brush in that
damp woodland earth -
me, the deer, the birds
a spider from his web
probably a wandering bear, too
we all, all of us, hear the piano plinks
and the flutes and clarinets and
we all go about our ways
following the lingering scent of
the damp woodland earth
after the storm.

Frank Weber is a freelance writer from Erie, Pennsylvania. He is a published author, featured in several magazines, anthologies, books and advertising campaigns as both writer and model and is a Staff Writer for Bare Back Magazine. Frank draws inspiration from the Kerouac-Bukowski-Thompson vein, and his work encompasses a simple honesty in written word and enough of a raw edge to make people feel what they read.