Pink Caladium-Watercolor © by Marilyn Peretti

 

      Merit Award, DuPage Art League, 2013

Lichen

Lichen slides
across this branch
like skin, thin blue waves
of dry watery ripples,

fragile dimples sleeping
over scaley bark
for years and years,
so subtle I pass it by,

so bold it creeps along
where nothing else will grow,
blanketing a hard cold stone,
or carressing deep crevices

of the cottonwood, glazing
the trunk in crinkeld silk,
ocean’s greens and blues
far from the sea.

Buckeyes, watercolor by Marilyn Peretti

Second Inauguration

Their coats vivid cerise and hyacinth
shown like flowers in the winter cold.
Second Inauguration Day. Two slender girls
with perfectly presidential parents.

I caught them on screen in early morning
entering the small yellow church, St. John’s,
the place to set the pace of blessing
for the gift of leading a unique nation
across the next four years,
writing history with every step.