“Ode to The Pastoral” Carol Lynn Grellas

Were I to alter what has been
amending days of life wherein
the years were stolen, love was lost
I’d follow him through icy frost

through verdant covered mountain tops
soft-kissed with snow on coral drops
of flowers swaying left to right
beneath each noble starlit night,

reclaim the path where rivers met
when shadows found each silhouette
together ambling hand in hand
the two of us throughout the land

with days we’d christen under stars
belonging to eternal hours.
Were I to alter Heaven’s clocks
as easily as changing frocks

I’d search the rolling countryside
where daffodils and love abide
then pick the blooms along the way–
and save them for our wedding day.

Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas is currently enrolled in the Vermont College of Fine Arts, MFA in Writing program. She is a ten-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a seven-time Best of the Net nominee. In 2012, she won the Red Ochre Chapbook Contest, with her manuscript, Before I Go to Sleep. In 2018, her book, In the Making of Goodbyes, was nominated for The CLMP Firecracker award in Poetry and her poem “A Mall in California” took 2^nd place for the Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize. In 2019, her chapbook An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium, was a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards. Her new book, Alice in Ruby Slippers, is forthcoming from Aldrich Press. Her work has most recently been published on Mezzo Cammin and Verse Daily. She is the former Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Tule Review the former Editor-in-Chief of The Orchards Poetry Journal. She is a recent member of the Sacramento Poetry Center Board of Directors.