Book of the Week

Ask the River to Talk About the Horses (MoonPath Press 2026)

By Judith Waller Carroll

 

Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

Although Judith Waller Carroll and I grew up in Montana in the same household with the same cowboy/teacher father and homemaker mother, her chapbook, Ask the River to Talk about the Horses, was a delightful surprise to me since being three years younger than me, she had a life I didn’t know about or remember and she saw life in color, while I viewed it in black and white.  Her poems are as powerful as the rivers and horses she describes in great detail, as charming as the characters in the corals and classrooms and as musical as the Hank Williams and Patsy Cline songs blaring from the jukebox at the Honky Tonks.

About the Book

In Ask the River to Talk About the Horses, Judith Waller Carroll writes about her native Montana— the horses, the rivers, the dust, tumbleweeds and silent cowboys who take their whisky straight—with candor, affection and humor. In poems that take the reader through childhood in Montana, adolescence in Idaho and back to Montana for college, Carroll brings back memories of a simpler time where the sultry sax brought the gym lights down to dim and the family drove to the closest big town for school clothes and Christmas presents, then stopped for malted milks after.

About the Author

Judith Waller Carroll is the author of What You Saw and Still Remember, a runner-up for the 2017 Main Street Rag Poetry Award, The Consolation of Roses, winner of the 2015 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Prize, and Walking in Early September (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac, published in numerous journals and anthologies, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. 

Here are a few of my favorite poems:

Ask the River to Talk About the Horses

How their hoof beats scattered the leaves 
that fell from the trees each autumn,
the reflection of their colors 
turning the water to rust and blood. 

Still, the horses drank and sometimes crossed 
where the current was slower, 
their manes flowing like wind
each sigh and nicker echoing across the sky, 
the river witnessing it all. 

All those years you walked 
along its swift waters in restless silence. 
The river could’ve told you
how it feels to be wild. 


Landscape, with Horses

Even from this distance of miles and time 
I can see the slight rise of the hill 
that signaled the turn to the rutted road, 
swirling with tumbleweeds and dust,
where my grandfather steered his jeep 
past the grandstand, the chutes, to the sun-bleached 
corrals where the whinnying horses waited.
I watched from the fence while he filled 
long troughs with water from a spigot. 
In summer, some of these corrals held the broncs 
that tested the toughest cowboys,
but these were local horses boarded year round
and cared for by my grandfather 
who chuckled and cooed as he pitchforked hay, 
the way he talked to Buster, his ten-year-old terrier 
who rode between us as we bucked and bounced 
back to the highway, crossed the covered bridge
over the river that eddied through cattails
and cottonwoods, passed the Bar K campground 
with the old log cabin, and ended up on Main Street 
with its sandstone buildings that housed the bank, 
the post office and the Atlas Bar.
Around the corner and a few blocks over
my mother was humming along to the radio, 
doing the crossword in the morning’s Gazette.
Glad to have a few hours to herself.


The Cowboys I Grew Up With

Didn’t talk much.
Liked their whiskey straight.
Lit their Camels
with a wooden match
struck on the soles of their boots
its flare filling the silence
then turning to smoke.


Nellie
. 
Every summer, my horseman father 
would try to address my fear, coax me
to ride the mild-mannered mare, a hybrid
of Arabian and plow-horse, the one 
all the kids rode first, no heart-stopping 
bucking and raring, as calm and sweet-natured
as her name implied.  I was unyielding 
in my refusal,  though I fed her apples 
from my hand and brushed her daily,
a model of the perfect horsewoman
he wanted me to grow up to be. 

Horse Dancing

Flags on every street corner,
the gazebo in the park festooned 
with red, white and blue. 

Townspeople, ranchers
and folks from neighboring towns 
even smaller than ours
gathered along Main to watch horses,
floats, kids on bikes, baton twirlers 

and the Columbus High Marching Band 
wind their way from the high school, 
past the creamery, down the six blocks of Main.

And at the head of the parade, my father,
holding the American flag 
and sitting astride his white horse, Zephyr,
who looked every inch the regal steed. 

Every block or so, the parade would pause 
while Zephyr danced sideways, strutted 
backwards, reared up, then high-stepped
back to the center and took a bow. 

The flag—nor my father—
never once losing their composure.


Is You Is or Is You Ain’t 

The weather is doing its usual tease,
a glimmer of sky flirting through the clouds 
like a fickle lover on one of those scratchy LPs
Mr. Winchester played for us in sixth grade.

We were used to heartache in songs, but the cowboys 
on the radio drowned theirs in whiskey or beer. 
These scorned lovers took action—told the cad 
to hit the road or whipped out a pistol and shot him.

His point, of course, was not for us to shoot
someone who didn’t love us, 
but to educate our ears to different kinds of music 
—jazz, blues, songs by Fats Waller and Bessie Smith—

plaintive notes and desperate words floating
in the air like chalk dust, Mr. Winchester at his desk, 
scanning the room, blue eyes cool 
behind tortoise-shell rims

and in the back row, dreamy-eyed, I was in love 
with these songs and all that they stood for: 
that it was possible to sink as low as you could go, 
then slowly rise up, better than you were before. 


Shucking Corn

A late-August evening, still warm 
but hinting of fall. A few grasshoppers 
flicked from the cornstalks to the lawn. 

My big sister and I sat on the steps, 
cornsilk sliding through our fingers
into the bushel basket, 

clean ears of corn dropping 
into the pot between us,
our own ears tuned to the porch 

where Mama and Aunt Babs 
hashed over the news from Billings 
about Sue, our 15-year-old cousin,

just a few months older than my sister 
but already going places—
cheerleader, Honors English, 
everybody’s bet for college— 
the example Mama held up 
when our grades slipped to Bs. 

Got her in trouble 
and have to get married 
was all we could pick up 

before Daddy stepped out, newspaper 
in one hand, glasses in the other, 
his deep voice low. Careful. The girls.  

Over by the hollyhocks, a frog 
began to croak. A breeze cut through 
the still air and caused me to shiver. 

Funny how the slightest shift in weather
could jolt us into a new season, 
how swiftly everything could change.


Honkey-Tonk Girl

All those years living so close 
to my grandfather’s bar
taught me two things: whisky 
could take an ordinary moment
and turn it into a dream or a nightmare, 
and music could make you ache
at the beauty of loneliness.
The jukebox would play “Crazy” 
or “Walking after Midnight” 
and the woman I longed to become
would float out of my body
on a voice as pure
as a bird’s first song at day break.  
And always the steel guitar, weeping. 


Ordering information: https://www.moonpathpress.com/JudithWallerCaroll.htm


 

My Life on Picture Postcards

 Joe Cottonwood

I have hundreds of postcards poems which I send by U.S. Mail to friends. 
What I love about postcards is the forced brevity, the chance to be whimsical and playful. They are ekphrastic poems for an audience of one.
Here are a few.
Joe Cottonwood

 
no matter the plumage
our blood began in
the same salty sea

apart we cool 
together we warm

 

We both as naked
as life can be
sharing the bath
the mom the future.

I lower you, son,
with my big thumbs
into warm water.
Yes, I’ll hold on.
And on.



 
trapped by avalanche
on the mountain
we made love
with such heat
the sky burst
into flame
clearing rocks
from roadway
and that, my child
in our van 
is how you began

 


As a giraffe I can peep 
into high windows 
but people drama 
is so boring. 

Give me trees,
a leaf to chew
a sky of colors.

Watch with me 
day’s end, from high 
it lingers longer. 

No two sunsets
ever the same

 

walk with me, friend
summer is ending

the wheat reaches
for a darkening sky

hidden in trees
starlings call
to sing farewell

soon we’ll
go home


 

in turtle school
we practice lockdown
we never fight

we shelter in place
we take the long view
in peace to grow old

 

the manual
for old age
is lengthy
in small print
for spotty eyes

the message is
a rising moth
a floating dove
a falling leaf

the last page
a surprise 


  

In the book of my life
the cover shows a handsome man
who is not me
driving a red convertible
which is not mine
across Africa
where I have never gone.

Resting by a redwood tree
a little man is typing
about the handsome man, car, Africa.
That’s me.
It’s a great story.

When Death Called My Name

 Neil Creighton

 
Neil with his grandson, Max. 

By Neil Creighton

The year of my retirement after 34 years of teaching was an interesting one. I’d experienced some internal bleeding but was assured by a specialist that there was nothing to worry about. What he had missed was a tumour that was growing not as a polyp but as a string which was slowly closing my colon. 

However, I retired and as an avid cyclist, on Dec 1 I began to cycle The Tassie Trail with Tim, my youngest son. Tasmania is our island state and 1500 km south of where I live. The Trail is 480 km in length, for mountain bikes and over bush tracks, fire trails and big mountains. It was a fantastic experience and my wife, Diana, joined me after I had completed it for a couple of weeks holidaying together. 

Unfortunately, my tumour had other ideas and on December 20 decided to completely close off my colon. After a night of unbelievable pain she rushed me to hospital where an excellent surgeon performed emergency surgery. 

For about a week I was desperately ill. These four poems record the experience, especially the moments when a world beyond pain begins to emerge. One poem, “Recovery”, details a magical day when I was allowed to go from the hospital for a couple of hours. The Sydney to Hobart yachts were coming up the Derwent River and it was an experience way beyond beautiful. Other poems are more deeply into those moments where survival is a struggle and death seemed to be calling my name. 


Recovery involved three more operations and nine months chemotherapy. Survive I did, got back on my bike, toured around Australia and overseas. But my perspective had changed. My life seemed like a resurrection and each moment and every experience was new and beyond wonderful. My mind was saturated with the beauty and wonder of this planet, life, love, friendship. 

These things have been in my face ever since. 

I had no grandchildren when I fell ill. Now I am privileged to know all six. 



Awakening.
 
Beyond morphine detachment,
out of the bed’s encircled darkness,
when pain recedes just enough
to let the mind tiptoe 
a cautious step or two,
 
through a small window
in the antiseptic room 
comes a gift the darkness brings,
a rush of revelation,
just glint of light playing on green leaves 
swaying to the wind’s caress,
sun-dappled tangle of branches,
cloud-flecked blue sky,
 
but each simple, commonplace moment 
transformed, miraculously new,
never truly seen before,
now shouting glory to ears
that had been deaf,
beauty to eyes 
that had been blind.

 
 I Remember.
 
I remember 
mumbled words,
tumour, cancer, lymph nodes, chemotherapy, sorry, 
light touch of hand on my shoulder, 
look of sympathy before the door closed. 
 
I remember 
her tender words, 
We’ll get through this together, Neil, 
her soft kiss, her gentle touch, 
her look of love before she left.
 
I remember 
the endless night’s utter despair, 
the fierce heat of death’s breath, 
the sleepless desolation, the repeating questions, 
Is this the end? Here? Now? Like this?
 
I remember 
leaving that pain-wracked body, 
wounded from chest bone to pubic bone, 
looking at it with curious objectivity, thinking 
That body on the bed, is it me?
 
I remember 
travelling somewhere, I don’t know where, 
somewhere utterly dark, a lightless void, 
and I remember the voice. 
I am the God of the living, not the dead.
 
I remember 
how suddenly I returned to my body, 
how I lay quietly in the dark night, 
how I thought Peace. It has covered me, 
lifted me up and floated me away.
 
I remember 
how deeply I slept, 
how I woke up to repetition of loved lines. 
Was it a vision or a waking dream? 
Was it? Did I wake or sleep?
 
Visitation

Before dawn I felt a touch.
A cold voice whispered Come.
A pause. Then that voice again.
Your race you have now run.

I shook my head, withdrew my hand,
weakly whispered “No.
How can I leave this woman
sitting quietly by the window?

Mr. Death I cannot come!
Look on this vignette--
See how morning’s growing light 
softly frames her silhouette.

She and I have things to do,
loving not yet completed.
I make this determined vow. 
I will not now be defeated.

When you some other time return
I may merely follow, 
say goodbye to this
quintessence of joy and sorrow

but now her soft touch makes 
your cold grip fall away.
Now I turn again towards light.
Now I again embrace the day.”
 
 
Recovery

I have been in dark places,
heard Death call my name,
whisper words of promise
to end breath and ease pain.
 
I have been in clear places,
seen the revelation of light
in the swaying of leaves  
so glitteringly bright.
 
I have been in deep places,
watched in still, joyous trance
bay’s water and light play
in sparkling, bright dance.
 
I have been in loved places,
gained strength to withstand,
felt promise and gained hope   
from the soft touch of hand.
 

Super-sized Series

 April Diamonds 

 
 
Engagement: Set in Stone by Lauren McBride

He once romanced me
with a candlelit dinner
and stroll under three alien moons
where the nights last thirty hours.
We saw others from our world
and many races new to us.
For our one-year-together anniversary,
he suggested flowers,
and bought tickets to a world
viewed only from a portal-room.
Under crystal clear skies,
glass leaves on viscous stems
bent in warm breezes
and flower petals shattered
into rainbows where they fell.
 
Today, while touring
a gas giant
he proposed
above a lake
of liquid diamond
lit by strobe-lightning.
Inside a claw-armed
atmo-skimmer, we fly
among diamonds suspended
in the sky where they form, until
too heavy, they fall like rain.
"Choose one," he says.
 
first appeared in Dreams and Nightmares 103

 

The King Who Grieved for a Diamond by Jacqueline Jules

Once upon a time, 
a proud king treasured 
a diamond as large as his fist.
He displayed it at banquets,
spent hours caressing 
its crystalline brilliance.

Then one day, he noticed a scratch.
His flawless stone suddenly spoiled.

Consulting one expert after another,
he heard the same tragic news:
the blemish was too deep.
Neither skill nor polish could restore 
previous perfection. 

The monarch grieved, despondent,
until one young carver examined the scratch
to see the stem of a rose. It will take time, 
the artist warned, but your treasure 
can be mended, its beauty increased.

For weeks, the king awaited 
the return of his precious gem,
flaw removed as if it had never been.
Instead, the diamond came back
with a flower in its face. 

And the humbled king 
grieved no more. 


GONE MISSING by Lori Levy

Oh darling, oh diamond, from a shop in Jerusalem,
you have glittered between us for thirty-four years.
Can this really be true?—that you’ve slipped 
from your circle of clasping prongs;
left me like this without any warning;
without so much as a scratch
of good-bye; nothing left behind
but a hole set in gold? 

True, I’ve dragged you every day to the toilet, the trash,
swirled you over grease in my kitchen sink.
Did you, poor gem, feel neglected, devalued?
And finally grow tired of riding my finger?
Yearn for a setting unknown, untried?

Or have you been hurt?  Banged and knocked out?
Perhaps you’re lying somewhere in dust and squalor,
a tight dark spot under or behind.

How can I replace you after all these years?
I miss you, jewel, and all I can do is
pray you’re resting in peace nearby,
maybe in a place where cookie crumbs gather
and quarters hide.

I smile like the emperor at my naked new ring—
just an empty space where you used to sit—
but I swear, dear diamond, your sparkle’s still here.

Previously published in "Unrequited: An Anthology of Love Poems about Inanimate Objects."


The Turban by Marilyn L. Taylor
For Penny P.

You look magnificent without your hair.
You look indomitable. Even proud
beneath the turquoise turban that you wear.

That turban doesn’t tolerate despair—
no whiffs of what you’d never say out loud,
no mourning for your fallen chestnut hair.

Instead, you’ve taken on a feisty air
that never fails to captivate the crowd—
just like that winking turban that you wear.

She’s bald!  the turban cries. But you don’t care;
it seems that you’ve entirely disavowed 
all myths that claim you’re less without your hair.

We see only your radiance up there,
more eloquent than kerchief, crown, or shroud,
out-glittering the turban that you wear—

which causes us to entertain a rare
surmise: something unearthly has endowed
you—and the turquoise turban that you wear—
with majesty.  With or without your hair.

--Previously published in Verse-Virtual


Sparkling Shana by Joe Cottonwood

Shana learns young to raise herself. 
To smile for survival.
Mom sings in LA nightclubs,
loves cats and gin and lunatic theories, also men 
who stink of tobacco but pay the rent.
They don’t treat Shana kindly.

Mom has a plan to save the world 
though she can’t explain except to Ronald Reagan
so Mom rides a bus from LA to the White House,
a call from the DC jail: You be good, Shana.
I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Shana rides in Grandad’s pickup across deserts 
to Texas where she finds kindness and horses 
until a pinto tosses her onto her spine. 
Then Grandad’s new woman hisses : He’s mine.

Shana hitches to Frisco where she’s a bent flower 
in bright clothing. With Texan good sense by day
she works as a secretary to a garbage company,
insurance benefit. Nights, it’s like a costume party.

Weekends, no costume at the beach 
with killer weed and wearing a smile when 
she meets a man on horseback who clicks. Like love. 
He’s lacking in kindness but Shana follows for a year 
until the drugs go crazy — his for fun, hers for pain. 
He gets prison, big time. She gets 
probation and a baby girl.

Two years on welfare, an insult but keeping clean 
and with the innate wisdom of a survivor 
she marries her chiropractor. Not love, not exactly, 
not at first. No click. But it’s kindness. 

Later, love. 
Now she manages the office. Her back 
has never felt better. In school the little girl blossoms, 
grows tall, so smart. See Shana smile.

More often than we might think, 
the grinding of the earth creates a diamond. 
Lovely. Hard. Sometimes flawed.
And she sparkles. 

First published in MOON Magazine


The Engagement by Rachael Ikins

No time for a diamond 
only outlet-store rings, shaped nuggets of gold. 
Three years in a drawer. 

Our stolen cat, police climbing the bank on their bellies like SWAT 
when your ex-wife suggested I open the apartment door, 
promised she had no gun. 

Who could believe this tire-slasher, the brick
thrown at our window, an explosion more honest. 
Glass around our feet, a spray of diamonds, 
your bleeding cheek.

There was no desire for a diamond, 
only life. Your January birthday 
chosen for our wedding long before 
divorce’s nightmare faded. 

***

Wednesday’s phone call. 
You left the hospital, picked me up, 
at lawyer’s office signed the papers. 
Driving  690 
on the way home
just us in our truck 
you reached one hand for me.
“Will you marry me?” 
Free to ask. 

Yes and yes. Forever. I will.

Friday.  Blizzard, one Syracuse remembers 
still when listing the great storms. 
Christopher next door shoveled our walk, 
CNY’s plow fleet, the roads. 

Against all odds at 7:30 under an arch of greens in our living room,
 I became your wife. 
My mother’s gown, sewn from my father’s silk parachute,
my small dog seated on the long train. 
Luminarias along the path shivered sparkles.

We never bought a diamond—
life was all we wished for 
but a field of them rippled and shone 
around us that January night, 
candle flames that danced 
the warmth of our love 
heated the night’s cold dreams
of the garden to blossom 
come spring. 


Ditch the Diamond, Dear by Sharon Waller Knutson

Drop it in a drawer and start dating,
advises the only smooth skinned
woman with a naked ring finger
at the Support Group for Widows.

Wedding rings wink from wrinkled
hands as we form a circle.
Not by choice, we joined this club
but we are not suddenly single.

We will always be married to our husbands
like our grandmothers, mothers
and aunts who all outlived their soulmates.
We will be buried in our wedding rings.


Diamonds Of April by Lynn White

Vera was an April baby,
a diamond,
though she never owned one,
never owned much at all
she left me my name
as her legacy.

She was Vera
so I
should be Lynn.
My mother liked things right
though she was more a fan of Bing
than the Forces Sweetheart.
Not everything can be explained!

She was not a forever diamond,
none of us are
and she did not get to meet
the diamond with me now,
his birthday coming soon,
but
I still have her legacy.
I always will.


A Pretend Birthday Party at the Beginning of Covid by Mary Ellen Talley
April 9, 2019  

One day, a girl who was four turning five
woke up on a morning eyeing balloons festooned
with her name on a banner. She rubbed open her eyes.

Her dad said wake up girly girl, this is your day
& her mom snapped a photo although she’d 
stayed up late frosting a pretty pink cake.

Her little brother ran to reach for ribbons
& her big sister painted a rainbow, no rain,
on a huge picture window while their dog barked.

Her big brother said okay I’ll give you one hug
& that’s all for today. Then her parents rolled out
a painted carpet of lupins & leaves down their driveway.

All of a sudden, her special friends jumped out of their cars
& skipped without tripping up to her house,
Blythe, Lilianna, & Amelie, arriving with ribbons.

As their parents chatted about this new virus, the girls 
played castle games in the birthday girl’s bedroom
until big brother called them for “Pin the Sparkly Crown”

on a drawing of the five-year-old Queen. Big sister 
spun kids around five times & soon there were crowns 
on noses, toes, & elbows. The girls wiggled & giggled

until they stopped to sing Happy Birthday 
with loud happy voices. The birthday girl leaned
forward to blow out flames of dancing pink candles.

She blew out all five & her dad cut slices of cake.
Mom gave out dainty donuts. Some had vanilla ice cream
& the birthday girl chose mint-chocolate chip ice cream.

Sure there were presents to open 
& the birthday girl was excited, polite, & said thank you 
as her little brother jumped in & out of the boxes.

The sun shining brightly onto the rainbow, it shone
through the window & the friends found tiny tiaras
for their dolls in the party bags & went home happy. 

Later, the birthday girl watched “Dragons Race to the Edge” 
with her family. They ate chicken nuggets, carrots & fruit salad
with bananas & apples & strawberries for dinner.

They’ll remember this day 
because some of it was real 
& all of it was special.