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August 2015
Emily Strauss
emily_strauss@hotmail.com
I have nearly 300 poems in public in many different places, both online and in print, in several countries from the US and UK, to the Philippines and Malaysia, Hong Kong to Canada. I often write on natural themes, showing our place within the grand scheme, based on my travels around the West.  Recently I have been responding to other odd prompts— stories of people and places. I'm a semi-retired English teacher in California, without a chapbook to my name. 

Picture
                                                                                   photograph by Emily Strauss

Reward


Driving by in the early light
I stop to look at 
a pale sandstone mesa 
cross-hatched like a frozen 
bee hive rising hundreds of feet 

I scramble across, breathing hard 
stand dizzy staring up, feel very small:
juniper and piñon surround me
sand     hedgehog cactus  
sun light   morning cool

suddenly I hear it— 
seven falling notes
ending up, again tripping 
down the scale
down the sheer walls
pure invisible notes:

a canyon wren
calls somewhere above— 
my reward for standing
in the cool shade 
one moment longer.

©2015 Emily Strauss
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