Jul 5, 2016 | Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Terza Rima
“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, … Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Evangeline...
Apr 17, 2016 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Quatrains
A cruel salt wind molests the twisted pine who grovels on his gnarled knees for rain; his futile prayers won’t mend his broken spine nor will he stand, as in his dreams, again. The cliffs themselves all crumble in the sea and the tumble-down rocks resent the...
Aug 20, 2014 | Commissioned, Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Picture Challenge, Sonnet, Terza Rima
Yes; I could estimate the grains of sand the Colorado carries year by year carving with his crooked and cursive hand. But such reckoning is but a cashier’s math yielding a number I cannot know for in my mind the zeros disappear. Nor can I figure a new fallen...
Aug 16, 2014 | Dream, Gus Stevens, Italian Sonnet, Moss Kingdom, Sonnet
“It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live.” “Beauty is...
Aug 3, 2014 | Commissioned, Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Picture Challenge, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
Grasping blindly through the barnacled slab he hunts eyeless for his armored prey. He cracks the clam and ignores the infant crab who traipses by but is no threat today. Perhaps he will hide in the deep again before the great ‘Out There’ supplies fresh...
Jan 20, 2013 | Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
Song birds are silent as they wing their way unhindered through a clear and naked air but when, wing-wrapped, they weigh upon a branch, they breathe a morning prayer. Either body or voice will rise in song but never the two combined. For we flightless, this seems...
