Dedicated to the creative souls of the Fredericksburg area who follow their muse
here on the banks of the Rappahannock River.

Ru Rok

Ruzena Rok is a writer, editor, and essayist. A native Californian, she spent much of her childhood in the South and East before gradually heading West again. As a poet, her work has been published in New Thought Journal, Superior Poetry News, Artisan, Hard Row to Hoe, and others. She recently won second prize in the 2006 Charlotte L. Garrett Memorial Poetry Awards competition. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Chapman University in Orange, California and currently resides in King George, VA with her husband, photographer Christopher Rok. Together they live, create, drink copious amounts of wine and have designs on a small cabin in the least populous county in the least populated state of the lower 48 - sometime in the not too distant future...

Progress there is construction everywhere something in the news about housing density going up as if anyone needed to tell us in a zone once deemed agricultural 100 year-old trees are logged thanks to loopholes found by crafty developers what’s a few more houses 64 a few less trees 10 decades 2 generations	Metro the blind high-functioning severely brain-injured man on the Metro is angry his voice rising like the scar that runs across his cheek chasing the shiver down the back of the woman he has engaged in heated conversation a revelation of rails he rails as do we whilst scenery and sincerity slip by some hypocrisy of independence amid grand limitation ending as easily as it begins the next stop doors open and close on occupants on fragile faculties of all kinds	Arlington House the dead are everywhere encircling the garden as white teeth in a mournful wan never-ending smile once there were days when the view from this spot was unencumbered unobscured by the now too perfect grin of evenly spaced stones when polite civilities were bantered over light cakes served by dark hands, tea cups and taffeta as rays of late afternoon sun splashed down upon and across the Potomac in the distance the Capitol dome's skeletal rise somehow carried portent of the dead’s ultimate coming their inevitable march and conquest upon the hillsides row after marvelous row
John Crazy Bear Speaks “There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men.” ―Black Elk I remember Hagaru-ri where the cold was a knife piercing my face my 10-foot circle of space where the world shrank and I along with it felt the tome of my ancestors weigh down upon me I didn't see no one for days that went on into generations of assimilation reservations where what was and is mixed and mingled broke apart and scattered as those around me melted away with the quivering snow Alone I waited eyes closed hearing nothing thinking less seeing the eagle bury the dove The blood was theirs and mine like my ancestors only here our dead stayed not where they lay instead we took them stacked them frozen as cordwood draped them with colors this country my people white, red, black, yellow tears with hushed whispers as we carried them home	Requiem West the house is weathered now older, smaller, empty shingles lie scattered among bluebonnets sprinkled across the yard out back the corral gate bangs open bangs shut in the warm evening air next to the pump-house the windmill toppled, lies sideways dividing what used to be garden in the fading light and stillness there are no signs of life except bees, their hive alive and humming amongst the tangle of debris the bees were always the true keepers of this plot of earth where once we grew sweet peas – or, tried – the deer reaping most of the bounty we sowed beyond the house and barn the road is overgrown a tumbleweed catches the breeze rambles, floats and is gone what semblance of home once left lingering here ebbs in silence with the sinking of the sun