Listen to an excerpt of “Voices in the Mountain”

Sweet Summer,

Starchild of the gentry, your fae smile melts this heart into the rivers of my Spring. Daffodils spill from my pocket, reaching for your diamond-bright gaze. But you desire daisies to braid into the brilliance of your sunshine hair.

On May eve, your sultry whisper turned the frozen crystals that lingered on my coat to butterflies—silvered sky-mavens on holiday. Your luminescent feet tiptoed through cranberry moss without crushing a tendril. Now, the colors of your frock vibrate with your laughter, painting the earth with your exhilaration. I dream of your strawberry hearts rushing up the mountainside, and pretend they are searching for me.

As I throw orange poppies in the hope to enrapture you, you command the sun to dry the earth of my tears. Ever elusive, you feed my withered flowers to your spinach.

You delight in the fires of the sky, enticing mortals to build them also on the earth. Thus, they dance with the bounce of fire and light, forgetting the pain of human toil. Then, you flood the fields with sunflowers, each encircled with leonine mane. All those bold faces turned toward the sun!

In this enchanted Summer, the swans admire your powder-blush wings by day, yet you carouse with bullfrogs at night. Riding the backs of dragonflies, your giggling inspires the wind, and porch chimes intone your song.

Enjoy companionship with your sisters of the bloom. As you toss gold coins to float as light on the water, I will watch those gifts turn again to dried leaves. Oh, how you tease, if only to amuse yourself as you tire of your season and seek to awaken the Lord of Autumn. Next year, I will bring more poppies . . .

. . . only for you, sweet Summer.

Jack i’ the Green

© Linda Manning, 2011

This project has been so much fun. As a writer, I have learned so much since taking on the position of managing editor for Aurora Wolf. As an editor, I stand awestruck at the massive changes that are going on in the publishing world. So much to learn; so much to do. But I do love it!

A free sample of The New Fairy Tales Anthology can be downloaded or the entire e-book purchased at Smashwords.

For those who prefer paper, the softcover edition is also available at Amazon.com.

My story, “Confetti Dreams,” took second place in the 200-word category.

Enjoy!

Except for a few chips in my closet, I don’t know if I have any cedars, only a colony of black locust trees and a congregation of towering conifers that watch over the entrance way. Between those silent sleeping neighbors, a frozen white blanket stretches under Heaven’s dust, and covers me.

I peer out, sleepy in my pocket of snow, as much entombed in the season’s gauzy fog as if I lay curiously in the doorway of an arctic igloo. Only the bricks are different. And the temperature.

Instead of fresh seal, I settle for bacon from the natural-practices butcher, and give thanks for a steady supply of eggs.

Out here, there is only God to answer me. A steady conversation of snow reminds me of the small hungry creatures who peer also out of their pockets in the snow, their igloos of sticks and leaves covered over with a dense white blanket.

When the sun shines, our busy tracks melt slightly, almost solidify so that we find ourselves walking on water. But ordinary creatures can’t do that. The crust breaks and we fall a few inches into the snow, step by step, and God laughs the way I do when my elbow slips off the edge of the table.

The clouds sneak in again and the conversation resumes, gathering in my foot prints as though they never were.

Here now, I have a few apples to share with my friends. With renewed purpose, we will make more tracks in the snow.



All content © Linda Manning, 2011

Robert Lee Berryman
August 17, 1950 – December 29, 2004

A Gray Dress Constant

There were grape vines on the arbor
in those days of laughter,
when the sun shone on labors
and new babies made us all
walk faster.

His voice still rings above the thrum
of his fingertips on acoustic strings,
causing us to weep over ballads
of love, travel and travails
we all somehow shared.

The Sixties would escape me
were it not for the stories of his soul.
Those years kept his eyelids soft
and his Leonine heart careful
under the weight of Truth.

If God was in his baby bottle,
then the Tao was rolled around his
tobacco, lit and breathed into his vapor.
His feet left prints where
there were none clean.

His bare toes sunk happy into fresh mud
where our fathers had stepped away
forever. Our biggest brother, he,
with his handmade baskets of
Trust, Love and Light.

I see his shadow now, in the glimmer of rainbow
lights strung in winter season. Tall
he moves between rose-cheeked choruses,
keeping time with the rhythm
of the ribbons and the snow.

Mulled-cider thoughts provoke my angry
belly, while winds of emptiness
rattle through my streets. Windows
shutter up their laughter against
cold reality.

There are grave pines near the arbor
where once the sun shone white.
Instruments of labor fail, and
the babies now walk faster
for babies of their own.

All eyes escape the arbor,
and this gray dress constant
walks the silent night.



© Linda Manning, 2009

My humble thanks to the talented Jack Rogers and Sue Babcock for their work on the art treatments, and Bob Eccles for his wonderful reading of my story.

Along with Kevin Wallis and John Arthur Miller, all of these folks put out a great mag that I am so proud to be a part of.

Thank you, Liquid Imagination!

Silver Blade Poetry

Last Ritual