LYNN NICHOLAS

★ ★ ★ ★

POETRY

Watermark Memories

Wind-whipped waves bully the shoreline,
lakebed sand shifts,
eliciting creaks of protest from the swaying wooden dock.

My desert nose twitches as pine and juniper,
merge with mowed grass,
eclipsing smoky park picnics and organic lake debris.

Deep-belly breathing, inhaling long-forgotten fragrances,
untouched by time,
unclasping sandals with impatient fingers, a girl again.

Specks of loamy soil intrude through mossy summer grass,
crushed by naked feet,
freckling fragile white skin and tinting toes green.

Wayward gusts convey scents of watermark moments,
decades buried,
re-awakening memories imprinted on the folio of a lifetime.

Toasting with fizzy orange sodas and campfire hot dogs,
impaled on sticks,
dripping juices onto warm, sticky hands, flecked by embers.

Images hover and tremble at the threshold of recollection,
vision blurs,
dampening my cheekbones with uninvited tears.

Beachfront beckons, tentative toes curl at water’s edge,
eyes cast downward,
scanning stones for broken glass, I wade-in ankle deep.

A scavenger seagull tilts a curious eye, hungry and hopeful,
struts away,
patrolling the beach, imprinting wet sand with three-toed tracks.

Gasping at mountain-runoff chill, two teenage girls plunge in,
splashing past,
trailing scents of oranges and sunscreen, still sticky on their skin.

Lynn’s writing is inspired by the drama of everyday life as it unfolds around her. She writes out of Tucson, Arizona, supervised by two dog friends and a black cat, who loves to straddle her keyboard. Online and print publications of short fiction include: Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Wow! (Women on Writing), The Storyteller (annual publication – Society of Southwestern Authors), Rose City Sisters, A Long Story Short, Further Stars Than These, and Gay Fiction. Poetry has appeared in SandScript Arts and Literary Magazine and online in Leaves of Ink. Her first novel is undergoing final edits and should be out in 2019.

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