from the banks of a silent spring.
Imagine my surprise when I picked up the phone.
Heard her soft voice as it began to reflect on the beauty of a place
untouched by human disruption.
Water clear as a crystal bell,
trees which bloomed in their rightful seasons.
Birds in such numbers almost needed to be air traffic control.
She laughed at the silliness of human words to describe an overabundance of fowl.
I wish more people could see this she said.
Then she cradled the phone back into its pocket.
Left me with a pang of longing for the world she found herself in.
—
Laurel Maxwell is a poet from Santa Cruz, CA whose work is inspired by life’s mundane and the natural world. Her work has appeared at baseballballard.com, coffecontrails, phren-z, Verse-Virtual, Tulip Tree Review, and Yellow Arrow Vignette. Her creative fiction was a finalist for Women on Writing Flash Fiction Contest. Her piece A Still Life was nominated for Best of the Net by Yellow Arrow Publishing. She has a chapbook forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2025. When not writing Laurel enjoys putting her feet in the sand, reading, traveling, and trying not to make too much of a mess baking in a too small kitchen. She works in education.
