Boy

Catherine Stavrakas

This is summer.
When the lawn behind my kitchen
ripples out to a clearing
near the weaving trees
where a boy reads
books on magic,
chases chipmunks
down to the river
climbs the walls of sleek New Hampshire granite
like a tree-frog
licking the air for prey.

I spy.
He waves, delighted,
the sun glinting off
his onyx eyes,
and runs off
having no time to talk.

 

Catherine Stavrakas is a public school psychologist and a private reading tutor living north of Boston.  She spent twenty years in New Hampshire, including both the Sunapee region and later, Londonderry.  Recently, Catherine won first place in the North Shore Poets’ Forum annual contest for “A Poem for Hilda.”

Erin Sweeney is an artist whose current work combines fibers, text, and the book form.  She completed her MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking at the University of the Arts in Pennsylvania, and holds a BFA in sculpture from the Maine College of Art in Maine. She shows her work nationally, most recently at Anderson Creative in Canton, Ohio.  Erin is also an instructor, teaching book arts workshops at her Lovely In The Home Press, in Peterborough, New Hampshire.