Leona Mason Heitsch
Bourbon, Missouri
Leona Mason HeitschBourbon, Missouri |
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Leona Mason Heitsch, born to a farming family in Pontiac, Michigan, now lives and writes near Bourbon, Missouri. It was high school teacher Dorothy McCannon who kindled the long burning flame of poetry. Trained in chemistry at the University of Michigan, Leona began teaching learning-impaired children after the birth of her deaf and autistic son. Her writings, an amalgam of interest in family, community, and the natural world, have appeared in varied publications, including Voices, a Missouri anthology, and Seasons of the Ozarks, an annual publication of Rock Memorial Library, Mountain View, Missouri. |
Wind and IceThis storm's icy blastonly seems to lash our world into submission. To the land, it is gentle, and from us it holds back its full force, we survive. How long can winter spare the arrogance that tears at the land the snow cherishes? When comes the humbling of the myriads beguiled at what can be ripped from the earth and other beings, contriving and merchandising an artifice that falls in wretched disarray upon an earth that's been invaded by its own? |
CreeksideBlessingsreflected from the pools while children play in leaf tones yellow-green and sky tones blue and silver gray. Blessings...I sit enforested and praise the primal one, the silent raining down of sun. Scarecrow ProphetCast across the late-toned landscape,useless tatter, twice disowned, I sketch a line that wind has honed, a portrait ragged, elemental, almost sleek and bear a tale that streaming air, unrobed, can't speak. |
Pond CalfHeels flicking into the oblique rays of sunand oblivious of the soft, dark shadows overcoming the calm green scene, a sand colored calf sashays off the pond bank as if to entice that sky-haloed calf into a meadow romp amidst the grazing herd. To this calf that does not know that Gorbachev will come to the Fulton in a day, or that the wrath of pent up fury strains in L.A., or how, in passing on the highway, I've caught him at his play, and will long remember I wish you frog song lullabies, sand-colored calf, warm zephyrs sweet with hint of growing grass. Dream calf dreams, for pond calf dreams them too, and when the light returns, he'll be looking up for you! |