January Roll Call

Martha Draper

             Growing up in rural Oklahoma and loving all animals, she’d asked dad for a horse. He explained how living in town and feeding one were not doable.  She was content with her cats and dogs then one day read Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and treasured every word.  She could imagine being inside a horse pulled sleigh in a forest full of snow.

            Years passed, and she put this horse neighing, sleigh ride on a bucket list.

            She cringed at the thought of traveling to the mountains then the trek up.

            For birthday number seventy, her friends loaned her a virtual reality gizmo and in their company with a hot chocolate party, she went on her sleigh ride. They laughed and sang and later that night in her usual journal writing she began, “Oh what a night.”

  

It Happened One Night

James C. Arnold

 

He spewed out a line of guano, got her almost there.

He sees her look of surrender. She’ll follow him anywhere.

 

Seal the deal. You know you want her. Another battle won.

It’s not her name that matters, it’s the conquest that’s the fun.

 

She also enjoys the chase, thinking she’s his special girl.

But the only thing he wants, is to take her for a whirl.

 

Then everything was ruined when he looked deep in her eyes.

Saw intense, unblemished, love – ashamed of all his lies.

 

It’s become more than a one-night-stand, he had to touch her soul.
Maybe he could redeem his own, that’s now his only goal.

 

They talked and talked till the morning light, he couldn’t let her go.

For he’d stumbled into a kind of love he never dreamed he’d know.