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Click tittle to download microchap
Cover: Upper Merrimack Watershed Assoc photo
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January thaw
white knuckle ice tightens
the Amoskeag Dam
through dark night
beside the freight train tracks
the river's black tongue
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the word's headwaters
where the Pennacook
exalted "Merrah Awke"
Pemigewasset gabbles
beneath the old moon
river rocks…rounding
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the way the river bends
around Bow's last ladyslippers
the scarlet tanager
upper Merrimack
the gull scavenges for the scent
of the Gulf of Maine
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Ron Scully © 2025
Acknowledgements:
Earlier versions of 3 of these poems
appeared in Akitsu Quarterly,
Pine Tree Tavern & Haiku Dialogue.
I wish to thank the respective editors.
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Click title to download microchap
Cover: ‘Like a bird on a wire’
by Lauri Burke
over ‘Carib’ by Lorraine Caputo
§
to my lifelong lark, Kathy
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i
between the office towers
shadows longing into
silences streets
ii
Aetna's red brick chateau
overlook's downtown's sorrows
murder of crows perch
iii
brass and glass tower
sticks noon in the eye
pendulum's passing sky
iv
flock of harpies
pick up their darkside Chai
between breaks, their beaks...
v
raven eyed actuaries
look sideways askance
sharpened pencils
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vi
Franklin Avenue Bakery
day old sesame and sprinkles
seeding ground dwellers
vii
a threesome cackle
in charcoal feathered topcoats
Heckle, Jackal, and Hyde
viii
Portuguese road crew
scrum out of Michael's Dive
miming their vuvuzela
ix
man with rook heart
nests behind his lifelong desk
pens his whole harmonium
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x
downtown drunken caw
from the redbrick brownstones
children carried off
xi
thirteen blackbirds
roost along the courthouse lines
unanimous jury
xii
Foxx's untimely clockface
Roman numeral noon stolen
by yellow eyed crows
xiii
feathery shadows soar
in missing man flyover
blackbirds bye bye
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Ron Scully © 2022
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Ron Scully is a very retired bookseller. After half a lifetime on the road, a Willy Loman only funnier, he has settled into the Pacific Northwest to read and write. He practices haikai daily and has published widely in the short form journals. He has published a half dozen chapbooks, including Listening for Thirteen Blackbirds with the Origami Poetry Project in 2022. "Between the lines" is schedule to be published by Prolific Books in sometime in 2025. Otherwise he is working on a play and a sports literature anthology.