Wildling
Comfortable in the cold,
mist tendrils rising
across morning garden,
dew-dampened boots
dry in the rising wind.
Cracking this year’s journal,
I release pleasure to the river.
Behind a dome of December clouds,
the sun struggles.
Month: April 2021
I’m A Vaccine Against Dumb Mistakes
I’m A Vaccine Against Dumb Mistakes
and I’m here to rescue you
from ex-boyfriends
who want to borrow money,
Nigerian princes and
misspelling Johns Hopkins.
I am here to stop you from
texting while driving,
applying mascara while driving,
eating while driving,
(you get the idea)
and smoking.
Horizon Views
Ocean to horizon…
land to horizon…
a woman stands
between.
She stares at the distance
and dreams of where
driftwood was born
as its temporary home
snags her shore.
I Love Trees
Standing tall, resolute in thunderstorms,
blizzards or sunshine, bending in breezes,
home to squirrels, hummingbirds and
owls. Silent, wonderfully silent in quiet
majesty, bothering nothing, existing, living
in due course their destiny without rancor,
war or bitterness. Who lives here with more
grace and dignity than trees? Who is it?
So You Know Who You Are
Never a moment of still air. Memories
a rib-crack and a hard hard way to breathe.
In the living room a dream like an infection
hid beneath the couch covers. I kept my eyes closed
tight. What happens when a past looms against endless sky
spilling cyclones and debris. Whimpers, strings
of saliva, the space between his teeth, her doggy
long tongue. I kept my eyes closed. Displaced wind,
outside squeezing through the crack beneath
a door. What happens when history gasps.
the still water that runs deep
somewhere on the coastline of my memory, two girls and a slick canoe
glide across a blue puddle, their opposite oars dipping in tandem.
one girl stands and stumbles like a wave overcome,
while the other sits and stares at their watery window.
beneath the girls, liquid glass and undersea sidewalk.
beyond them, a fish’s bones settled at the brink
of a sandbar’s black out. the girls are only canoeing because
the wave-like one is scared of fish, and feels their lips against her feet
April
the clouds hinted of old bedsheets
left on too long
and then the fog fell clammy
in a downing with the sun
and we were so cold
the wet seemed like wind
and the turns in the road
like twists in a tortured gut
until the steam rose with bravado
from the lonely sugar shack.
Convalescent
My body the underside
Of a river at night, dark blue water
Strewn with a pinch of stars.
All is quiet now that I’ve lost
The will to fight. All I can conjure up
Is a lonesome silent fish, a gentle splash
Of gold on the face of the moon.
Then all falls backs into the soft,
Watery black. I’m on my back,
And my legs will not move.
All I can do is wait to be reborn.
Read more "Convalescent"Rocket Man
I said my goodbyes, turned back to the shore, stopped trying to find you. It took me awhile, took me a few more pink striped skies, a few more mountains, a few more years. But I found my way, wrested my skin from yours, saved myself from going under. I talk to you still, the way we always talked, close and deep without platitudes or pretense. You know I have forgiven you for all the ways you almost took me with you. You didn’t mean to, never meant for me to get swept into your undertow. You tried to stop it but I was desperate for a reason to fade away.
Read more "Rocket Man"Forest Spirit
Many selves,
a raging fire, a sparkling chasm.
viper slithers to its apogee – the sun –
almost succeeds, almost destroys –
I am justified in brevity, breathing
as I, come face to face,
and so it is – angry souls in each other’s bodies –
while August burns treacherously
in the dry grasses.
Boy leaves tracks. Life trudges.
Brooding, endorsing the searing sun,
Can’t close the seed captured here,
die brother…live sister….
no distress or bitterness or revenge –
merely randomness that
divides itself unmercifully
Visitant 