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Unexpiring
Ekphrastic on the above photo
Unexpiring constant Sun,
Earth untired responding spun,
Surging fire, maternal birth,
Urgent sire of vernal mirth.
Père Sol, of ruth and blaze,
Mère Earth of falling gaze.
Ruth: Hebrew for mercy
Père: French for father
Mère: French for mother
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Longhorn Swath
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The Handsome Angus, Hereford Gent,
And deftly crafted breeds were meant
For gentle dell and verdant land,
Where thick’s the grass and poised the stand.
Posing stately, ‘side a stream,
Brown and Black with comely gleam,
Removed from wolf or coyote band,
For horn be short and won’t expand.
Less than long, amid the toss,
Twitching neck but brooking loss,
Upon the plain and looking grand?
On open range, or prairie span.
Not so, their lanky cousin, cuss,
Wide of swath, without a fuss,
Gliding slow and lithe to man,
And hold the frontier being hand-
y with this hardy 5 foot swath.
Clever Coyote: do your math.
Hungry Wolf, should you demand
A steak tonight? Some other brand
Might mark your efforts better spent;
Than on the Longhorn, quick as flint,
To toss y’ through the air, no dand-
y beast is he, no boring, bland,
Or fragile sort, who lacked a plan,
But horn – ed wide, since time began.
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Alec Ream is a writer living in Virginia. His poetic work and creative fiction have been widely published. A member of the Demosthenian Literary Society at UGA, he wrote on Lookout Mountain, and continued to write, lecture and work for Delta Kappa Epsilon HQ. He was first published reading to the pledge class of Michigan DKE, in Ann Arbor in 2008. Recently, his poem Green Fire was read at the Washington Literary Society & Debating Union at UVA.