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    Songs from a Suitcase
    Songs from a Suitcase
    Songs from a Suitcase
    Ebook65 pages39 minutes

    Songs from a Suitcase

    By Leslie Smith Dow

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    About this ebook

    Stories and poems of unusual lives, strange occurrences and off-beat travel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLeslie Smith Dow
    Release dateFeb 24, 2017
    ISBN9781370441921
    Songs from a Suitcase
    Author

    Leslie Smith Dow

    As a rock 'n' roll journalist for several years, I interviewed and reviewed acts like Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, BB King, James Cotton, Supertramp, Axl Rose, Tragically Hip, Ria Mae, and many more. Somehow, the weirdness of writing concert reviews at 3 a.m. in an empty newsroom just never left me. That experience, combined with growing up in a very insular but sinful small town, and the strange events that occur during frequent travelling has left me permanently warped. My only outlet is the Badass Bingo gang, who figure prominently in the Badass Hippie Tales series. They have really got a hold on me! Check out Ricki Wilson's Indie Spotlight: http://rickiwilson.com/4/post/2017/03/indie-spotlight-on-badass-hippie-tales-by-leslie-smith-dow-lesliesmithdow.html I am the author of several print and e-books including the award-winning historical biographies Adele Hugo: La Miserable and Anna Leonowens: A Life Beyond the King and I. Adele Hugo: La Miserable has recently been re-released as an e-book, with a new Afterword detailing the fascinating mystery of a painting which could link Adele and the founder of French Impressionist painting, Edouard Monet. Read Elissa Barnard's review of the re-issued e-edition of Adele Hugo in www.localxpress.ca at https://www.localxpress.ca/local-arts-and-life/adele-hugo-still-haunts-author-443323. See details of the new Afterword, featuring the mystery of Adele and French painter Edouard Manet at https://gooselane.com/collections/e-books/products/adele-hugo. I am also a beekeeper, farmer and owner of Red House Honey, which produces all-natural raw, kosher honey on the shores of the St. Lawrence River. AWARDS/JURIES: I received the Canadian Authors' Association Air Canada Award for Most Promising Canadian Author under 30 and the Dartmouth Writers’ Award for Non-Fiction. I was a finalist for the Ontario Trillium Award, the Ottawa Citizen and Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton writing awards. I have received grants for my writing from the Canada Council, the City of Ottawa and the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton and I have been part of selection juries for writing grants and the on-line poetry magazine, ByWords.

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      Book preview

      Songs from a Suitcase - Leslie Smith Dow

      Songs From A Suitcase

      by Leslie Smith Dow

      © 2015 Leslie Smith Dow

      All Rights Reserved

      POEMS

      Silver Queen

      Monet Hesitates on the Japanese Footbridge

      Prayer for Two Voices

      Girl Lost on the Ice, 1914

      Brown Trout

      Looming Under Nyiragongo

      The Eternal Forest

      No Mayan Epic

      Egypt

      The Amazon River

      Sweet Edie

      Lily

      Everything

      Fairhead Soul

      Manitouk

      Margaret's Road

      Labyrinth

      To Whaleback Shoal

      Green

      Dharamsala

      STORIES

      The Lake

      Bless the Virgins

      Real Estate

      Unnamed

      Water

      SILVER QUEEN

      Thirty days I walked her shadow

      following her rocks her streams

      hills of silver are what I seek

      flecks of it in her jet-black hair

      Spokane is mountains behind me

      only Raven knows the way

      dropping sticks in my path like totems

      to great deeds remembered, left undone

      Too far I’ve been lured by fortune

      my hammer divines for home

      the ashes of my fire scatter

      at the apex of this last day

      Down I lay under

      her full belly of shimmering dreams

      a witch’s moon, rising magic

      twilight mountain-wrought

      I am a hundred dreams of silver

      dusty hooves and clanking metal

      men digging the earth into a deep blue sky

      I heard the mule train rumble by

      Into stillness I woke

      bathed my fire in icy starlight

      streaming water of silver and gold on my skin

      she’d hung my clothes to dry

      Her gifts were berries and salmon and sun

      wrapped in Raven’s fur and shining dawn

      I lay in her arms like beauty

      Deep and deeper into dreams she wove me

      through forest-deep days and nights

      she carved her riddles on my skin

      The cottonwood groves sung her words

      sung them up high as a hymn

      how hard I believed on this lost path

      I’d found my way

      Only on later clouds did whispers start

      rippling across the ice-cool lakes

      her voice called endless through the pines

      deep and black as thunder

      On the edge of wonder

      she has bruised me

      under her shadow and twined

      me in her web of forest sleep

      My mouth is a trout on her twisted hook

      her face is the rising moon

      I am the howl of the midnight wolf

      her voice is the Raven’s wing

      She rumbles like an illness

      sifting sandstorms running through

      Silver Queen she calls to me

      I only want what’s mine

      Two times I saw the rainbow

      two times it ended at you

      MONET HESITATES ON THE JAPANESE FOOTBRIDGE

      Uncertain footsteps over the Japanese footbridge

      looking into water black as eyes asking the question

      which holds the true light and form?

      followed by the deadly pause I cannot see

      On canvas the colours grow:

      the brush on weeping willow leaves

      that's my sign of anger

      the one name that dares describe this bending pain

      And here is the Grand Allee at midday

      nothing but blazing passion under a sun

      a sun I held inside

      as darkness became

      Light remembered on hemerocallis

      crushed where I lay

      waiting for the earth to receive me

      this is what you must look like now

      PRAYER FOR TWO VOICES:

      MYRA ROAD/THIS PLACE OF BITTER

      Eliza Dares I am

      and all I know of hope

      is

      16 full of Eamon's dream

      and Eamon's dreaming child

      of

      rough hewn lifetimes

      passed

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