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Lake Lure, a poem by Jo Barbara Taylor


Lake Lure
by Jo Barbara Taylor 

Sunrise greets the sleeping tarn, quiet
in the lap of mountain mist. Mourning doves
hold their sighs, and antelope tiptoe
across tawny meadow, smooth
like thatch, muffled with dew.
As the play of dawn stirs passion
in those depths, water will lick the banks
like a cow washing her calf to life. 

When the calf bawls it first maaw,
(and so it is, you know, the stir within each of us)
the antelope thunder over the land,
doves croon their distant lament,
(draw us into day)
and ripples begin to skim the surface
of the mountain mere.

Bio: Jo Barbara Taylor lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, grew up in Indiana, and remains an Indiana farm girl at heart. Her poems and academic writing have appeared in journals, including Tipton Poetry Journal and Inwood Indiana, magazines, and anthologies. She leads poetry workshops for the North Carolina Poetry Society and OLLI through Duke Continuing Education. She has published four chapbooks, the most recent, High Ground by Main Street Rag, 2013