Rorschach Test, by Janet Ruth

Enter Here, by Scott Wiggerman (USA) 2025

Rorschach Test
  
I don’t see portals, doors or archways. I see a mother elephant standing, protective, over her child. Her tree-like legs. A wizened eye looks out warily on a tomorrow that holds few promises for their survival. And yet, that blue heart, big as a medium-sized dog, beats a determined rhythm in her chest. That snake-like trunk hangs ready to wrap around her child if he should stumble. Her 12-lb. brain with those big temporal lobes remembers every watering hole she’s ever visited. So crucial for the coming heat and drought. Beneath her belly, the calf stands, waiting, surrounded by the four legs that define his world, no matter how dark. 
  
enter here 
what future do we imagine 
when we close our eyes?

​ Janet Ruth

​Janet Ruth is a New Mexico ornithologist and poet. Her writing focuses on connections to the natural world.  She has poems in a wide variety of journals and anthologies. Her sonnet, “A World That Shimmers,” won the inaugural True Concord Poetry Contest, was set to music by the 2023 winner of the Emerging Composer Contest and was performed by True Concord Voices and Orchestra in Tucson, October 2023. Her book, Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018) was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards.   https://redstartsandravens.com/janets-poetry/