like lotus, i fold my halves into wholes bloom to stem to mud, i return my alms within cloudy veins and wait for morning to reach out his hands and light my candle.

Why

Why don’t you want me when I’m pink and full like ready rose hips when I’m fine and elegant as Queen Anne’s Lace when I’m sweeping and blue like weeping willow when I’m bright and happy as dandelion flowers when I’m expansive and daring like white mountain daisy when I’m small and shy as buttercup…

In child pose, I am curled like a split hickory husk with its dark forehead to the forest floor and emptied but splayed heart open to the tang of rain -slick oak and lichen sleeves on bark. I surrender to the pull of shifting and the weight of waiting in purposeful pause. Moving inaction carried…

Gold

Leaves of gold encircle me with their sweet scent of death and I am not afraid to rest like them on the hushed lips of the earth’s wishing well, anointed with peaceful silent air, back to the arms of darker dreams. For I carry their candled skin into these shrouded depths and breathe.

Blue

Today I am blue like the gushing mountain spring turned to drowsy pool when all the tall trees turn gold and wave their light leaves like fans fluttered by fine wrists. Today I am blue like the cascade that slips instead of spills its deepest hues and my stomach only has room for dark, dark…

Pinata

Outside my door is a gift built on stilts, a wooden horse rocking in a shaky wind. A scaffold holds its weight and a bridle inside its mouth hides a breathy whisper. I am afraid of gifts given with no name, innocent doves with baby rattle tails. What is in the wild basin of this…

The Land of Little Rain

“Here you have no rain when all the earth cries for it, or quick downpours called cloud-bursts for violence. A land of lost rivers with little in it to love; yet a land that once visited must be come back to inevitably.” -Mary Austin, The Land of Little Rain Between you and me sits a…

A water course over stone and silted bank, spills like a glass overturned from mountain peak. Through golden grasses, it stretches elbows for trout to find a home in christened robes that once came down from truffle clouds. Trumpet thunder from shrouded skies, the water now has turned to wine. Soft does the sun drink…

Is That Right?

I want to write, is that right? Is it right to want to write about how heart-shaped leaves of a linden tree flutter on a loose breeze, like a line of laundry twirled in the sun? Is it right to want my love spread out on a thousand leaves, printed on a pirouette and dried…

Callous

Unused callous on fingers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 like wafers left stale in wrappers left open. What good is a callous which falls, written on loose leaf lines but expires when the date comes; can’t protect when you need to play fingered songs. Lets the heart miss afternoon tea; feeling soft.

No Name

To write your name would give it power: acknowledging its curve of letters and the time it took to spell it out. To spell you out and your existence, would make you real but that would take energy that I don’t have, effort that I lack first thing in the morning because you know I’ve…

Dog-Eared

One afternoon, I left my window open and a stacked pile of books along the sill of a clear blue sky That afternoon, it rained on the prairie; the first time I felt a drop slide in my ear in over a month. In the evening, I came back to my window after work to…