Copyright © 2004 The Pennsylvania State University

The Palimpsest Review - Volume 10

Palimpsest onLine!'s Professional Writers at Work

H. Kassia Fleisher: "Spinning Miss Stein's Grave"

Todd Davis: "Looking for theLight"

Prudence Grimes: "Writing My Father's Stories"

Jeff Worley: "Tapping the Wellspring of Language"

Ray Petersen: "The Cardinal Trait of the Writer"

Dev Hathaway: "The Art of the Story"

Karen Blomain: Two Poems

Len Roberts: Seven Poems

Len Roberts: Cohoes Theater (PDF Book)

Maria Jacketti: "Objects of Poetry"

Jim Manis: "Struggling to Publish"

Return to Palimpsest onLine!

Sarah Etter: “Concaves”

Marissa Molina: "The Day I Wasn’t There"

Andrew Timberlake-Newell: "Smokie"

Anthony Kocur: "To the Edge"

David Kim: "Young and Perverted"

Ryan Morini: "B – Movie Enthusiast"

Joe Giachero: "Whatever Came First"

Meghan Elliott: "Sound"

Veronika L Daddona: "Driver" and "Lamentia"

Ronell Smith: "The 1988 Holiday Barbie"

Charles Howells: "Bandwagon Patriots"

Andrew Noll: "Ten Feet Behind J.F.K."

Sarah E. Smith: "Autumn Skies"

Daniel Debiec: "A Morning in Missoula" and "into the rain"

Ryan Melling: "Hand in Hand"

Andraleen Zelonis: "Let’s Play"

Kevin Cope: "House Guest"

Becky Liscusky: "I Like Dogs and Frogs" and "You know the pan’s hot"

Amber Shinskie: "Scent of a Cherry Cigar"

Zachary Bricker: "Bedtime Story"

This page is maintained by Jim Manis (jdm12@psu.edu)

Last updated July 3, 2004; first published to the web: July 3, 2004.

The Palimpsest Review and Palimpsest onLine! are publications of The Pennsylvania State University. The words and ideas contained within their pages are the property of their authors and cannot be used for any purposes without the authors' specific written consent.

Ryan Melling – Berks

Hand in Hand

Fireflies are the guardians of shadows,
so I learned at nineteen.
Yet I chased them wholeheartedly, with the joy of a child,
giggling and skipping from one beacon
to the next.

flash

And a laugh accompanyied by pounding feet
of a girlfriend and I running hand in hand
to the spot we surmised our companion may float.
Searching hard in the moonlight
In the shadow
Of Cottonwood Tree.

flash

We’d been fooled.
Behind us! We loped.

flash

On the bank of the river
our cottonwood sheltered
Our firefly friend, zooming faster and
Faster, two “children” laying chase.

flash

Went our rabbit,
summers humid air sheeting off skin,
glittering in the moonlight.

clap

proclaimed her hands, white as milk,
smooth as silk,
protecting the prize for my innocence to peek,
laughter exhausted,
adulthood set in.
She opened her hands and our faerie flew out.

flash

And we walked to the path
hand in hand.

Ryan Melling's poem appears here with his express written permission and cannot be reprinted or otherwise used without his express written permission.

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