Down the curving lane where the red brick road bends,
stands a blue cottage upon a hillock’s end
the morning sun roams about its thatch roof dry
sloping down the eaves-stacked water reeds’ lines,
creeping breeze skirts the honeysuckle vines
parching the veil of dew upon the nectar blooms.
A mother calls her wayward son from the graveled step
her throaty peal darts over the yawning gate, through
the shadowed oak then ripples above the gurgling well
as it loops back round the echoing house;
the sound that’d wandered out is drained nearly empty as it climbs the
sodden deck–
the rattling tail snakes by the garish light lurking near
the pine wood swinging door, and steals beneath the tiny slit in dregs
of crumbling thrill;
out from the sunny vale and into a faint lilac-scented air
of the oblong-shaped entrance hall where a hung kerosene lantern
gently tossed its amber flames upon a smutty stucco wall,
the slithering drone creeps by the slimy coat of wet floor,
edges to the foot of the baby’s crib through the adjacent nursery
clambers up the oak spindle, looked over the slat-free side
then caresses a pair of chubby white arms stirring from below
the oodles of cooing noises and spit bubbles.
——
Lana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and flash fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with more than seventy journals, including Aurorean Poetry, Chiron Review, The Brasilia Review and Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine, among others. She resides in the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam with her novelist husband and two frolicsome imps.