Photo Challenge & Poem: A Face in the Crowd

 

It’s the ninja cat skirting the
shadows, hesitating, then moving
on a silent path, leaving no trace.
Or the gangly boy who’s always
drawing dragons in the back row
of class, much too skinny but
dragons in flight, breathing fire.

The one puppy in the litter who
sits like the Buddha, full eye
contact in the middle of a howling
chaos of mushy kibble and poop
and torn newspaper, unblinking.
That woman with a bad haircut
who talks to herself, a bottle goat

in the passenger seat of her truck,
floorboards covered with halters
and leashes and ropes, just in case.
The spotted donkey standing
guard under thick brows; watching
for intruders but hoping the mare
will walk off the hay soon. The

crooked elder who climbs the
front steps, pulling off boots on the
porch of a dark house, switches
on the kitchen light, then one egg
cracked in the pan, the yolk soft
on dry toast, as a black cat settles to
a companionable place on the table.


….
Anna Blake at Infinity Farm
Horse Advocate, Author, Speaker, Equine Pro
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Anna Blake

0 thoughts on “Photo Challenge & Poem: A Face in the Crowd”

  1. Love! So evocative, bet folks comment on how clear the images are… and how familiar. Who among your readers does not have halters andleads and leashes in our trucks?

    No goat here, and I married that gangly dragon drawing kid, so there are 2 eggs in the pan. And the term gangly certainly suited his 101lb self when he volunteered to go to Vietnam as a 17yr old kid. I just bought him a huge set of vinyl wall art from “How to Train Your Dragon”. He got me a puppy.

    The sometimes Buddha, sometimes Tasmanian Devil puppy is happily shredding her puppy pads in the kitchen between boneless puppy naps on the huge bed we got to fit her full grown Golden Retriever size. I fear it will not survive the puppy days though. After 20+ years of rescuing and adopting adult dogs Dragon Dan and I look at each other many, many times a day asking “Whose idea was it to get a puppy?” LOL

    Love your word pictures Anna.

    Reply
  2. Even though it’s said “a picture’s worth a thousand words” in this case the words are pictures onto themselves. So powerful and the best part is the pictures the words evoke are pictures from our own memories. Poetry at its finest

    Reply

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