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Liz Marsden

My name is Liz Marsden, native New Orleanean. I am a college English instructor displaced by Hurricane Katrina which totaled my home and swallowed my poetry file. I have moved to Ft. Worth TX and lost my job since the storm destroyed our campus. I am 56, love animals and teaching. I try really hard to be a vegetarian. 

First Picnic

Dried turtle shell in East Texas
We laughed to see the dog pounce
Picnic by the lake manmade and
cypress filled

Alone together you
Saw a young melon growing
Green striped amid curling
vine against brown soil

Clamshells and fish scales
Walking by fire ant hills
I feared the sting of ants
not the growth of the melon

You feared nothing
Saw the unripe surviving
Melon's future in isolation
ripening in spite of hazards

copyright © Liz Marsden