Love Song for the Dandelion
When you scatter
I gasp
aware that the windborne
carry truths
too powerful to breathe
too perfect
to bear
What is your name
I ask
knowing the answer
all along
* * *
“Love Song for the Dandelion” first appeared in Rue Scribe in September 2018. Many thanks to Eric Luthi and the editors at Rue Scribe for accepting this piece and several others.
My poem “Confession to Montgomery, Asleep on the Church Steps,” is live at The Compassion Anthology. Many thanks to editor Laurette Folk for offering this poem new life.
Awaiting Thunder, He Dreams
If all our voices were to meet in the atmosphere
what could the rain achieve?
When we give nothing we have nothing.
Is it enough to listen?
Wisps and heaps, ripples and sheets.
Accumulated, dispersed, fingers
unknotting death’s
grip, steps taken around the flames,
in caution, in delight,
imagining the greatest undoings.
“Awaiting Thunder, He Dreams” was first published in Red River Review, in August 2018.
Worms
Yesterday’s cored apple buzzes with light,
another vessel stored in sadness.
I have swallowed vows.
I have replaced air with earth
and enjoyed tongued flesh.
To think is to live. To live is to delay.
Burrowing through the soil’s rich
decay, this body,
accepted. Absorbed.
“Worms” was first published in Rue Scribe in September 2018.
Even at Night
That year it snowed
and possibilities sprouted
like secrets opening to
chambers in the deep cedars
lining our hills. What did you read
in the vultures’ loops, in those
spaces within? I recall striding
through a field of labor-drunk
bees burdened with pollen. Now
we trek from house to hovel,
carrying books and drills,
water and planks, moving
glass and stone and the dying,
finding absolution in task, in
ritual and folly, in soil and sky;
the sun touches us even at night.
“Even at Night” was first published in 13 Alphabet Magazine, out of Bangladesh, in September 2018.
(Hotel Eden) In Full Light We Are Not Even a Shadow
Which is to say clarity persists in
increments, in the silent space between
color and lens, within parables seen
in the incomplete: straw, hand. Imagine
white valued more than manner as hidden
thought remains obscured. Lower your eyes, lean
forward. Perspectives tilt towards the mean,
suggesting purpose. When we examine
intent, do we find it? The irony
of bottled cork, of sullied paradise,
a coiled wire, the parrot whose voice,
unheard, implicates us. What felony
must we commit to admit the device
in play? Pull or release? The mimic’s choice.
* * *
Notes: “In full light we are not even a shadow” is a line from Antonio Porchia’s Voices.
Hotel Eden is the title of a piece of art by Joseph Cornell. An image may be found here:
http://www.wikiart.org/en/joseph-cornell/untitled-the-hotel-eden-1945
This made its first appearance here in March 2015.
Self-Portrait as Question
Walking hand-in-hand with what,
who presupposes why, and when
huddles with where before skittering
off to its murky corner. Sometimes
I present myself as a shy minute
or a cloud’s effigy streaming across
a scruffy field. Few suspect the truth.
Answers ricochet from the limestone
wall, but no one nabs them. I react
quickly and offer the unknown, the
life I claim, my name, in return.
* * *
“Self-Portrait as Question” was first published in Rue Scribe in September 2018. Many thanks to Eric Luthi and the editors at Rue Scribe for accepting this piece and several others.
O at the Edges 