Winter

By Finn Straley, grade 5, Sitka

The snow cracks under my feet
like the muffled crunching of eggs.

Looking up I see the branches of the trees
like green, ghostly figures hovering above me,
and the unbroken snow
is a great white plain.

I watched the branches in the water
of a small creek, as if they
were large fish trying to escape from the icy cold.

The snow beneath my
feet sparkling like stars on a white sky.

I love winter.

Wile E. Coyote Considers the Obvious

By John Straley, Sitka

There seem to be countless routes
to my well planned failures:
I really thought the rocket
shoes would work.

And the anvil carried across the chasm
on the tight wire tope
seemed reasonable at the time
but now, I wonder?

I lay in bed this morning
my ears bent, my knees swollen
knowing that He was out there but
thinking maybe I shouldn’t go.

Maybe I should stay in bed
all day long and read a book
or listen to the news on the radio
but truthfully, I am not meant for that.

Too much introspection is bad for a coyote
and besides, my wife doesn’t want me around
tapping my toes, fidgeting with the dynamite
and alarm clocks, the birdseed and suction cups.

She says I have to go
that God must have given me this desire
for some good reason, even if only
to provoke his remote, unfathomable laughter.

"And what do we get?" she says, "We get the ability
to take a punch and become uncrumpled
with every flattening. We can fall through the air
all our lives and land virtually unhurt."

"And besides, what would you do if you caught him?
such a skinny bird could not feed you through his
long, unknowable life we blunder through
day by day by day.