The floor,
amber leaves whispering at my feet
and the trees old and young
like me

white bark with black scars

I try to look for you
but you hide like wind
and I listen to the rustle of our home,

you disappear
from me as always

like laughter
from someone getting older

your kisses swim in the air that I can smell
and the scents of forest floor

my dress is made of petals
that are all browning with age
like my eyes

I wore the cold like your breath on my mouth
and your quiet sighs to my forehead
like wilting flowerbed thoughts

and I threw you into the wind
like burning letters

silence ticks like  a clock inside  the world is us here in the room we enter to make music with the joining of hearts I kneel in tenderness not getting lost in the rustle of sighs singing tunes known many times before the faster we approach we laugh

The rare rustle of
Newspapers—
Consistent,
It’s only a weekend
Kind of thing,

Little fingers
And feet like
To destroy
The news with
Chocolate pudding,

As soldiers clench
And politicians sigh,
Their heads suddenly
Sugary and delicious.

You were the nurse who came to stay
to care for a sick woman who died,
leaving you to marry her farmer husband
and finish the raising of their twin daughters.

This was the story you told me
as we walked to the general store
under leaves dripping from a summer shower
as the door of day swung closed behind us.

You introduced me to the storekeeper.
A tall woman who, like you, wore an apron.
The store smelled of flour. And, when she opened a jar
on the counter, of licorice, which she called anise.

You bought sugar and a box of tea, which you paid for
from a small cloth purse that held no bills, only change.
You let me carry the groceries home.
I felt grown up for the first time.

As darkness grew complete we sat on the porch
drinking the tea with the sugar and a bit of orange peel.
You talked as though I was not a child.
I imagined your life as it was and mine as it might be.

Later, as I lay in bed neither asleep nor awake,
from the barn came the rustle of an owl’s wings.

Yesterday folds our vital documents
into its briefcase and steps
onto a busy street.
Busses lunge on asphalt, rolling
knotted muscles and emptied pockets deeper
into roads where dogs and paper
blur the lines between news and shit.
Lovers, condos, taxis, and sidewalks
pray to scrape up rent.
Tomorrow crouches, ready to spring
and thrust us back into the boxing ring.

I sit at the end of the Earth,
an old, fractured dock worn by water
cradles me and fixes the scene.
Yellow sails swimming the Jetstream
hang on to the red dinghy whose wake
sets my eye on the far shore.
Coney isle ‘cross the murk-warped sea
holds ancient homes like tapestries
hold ancient threads that you can see
in some museum for a fee.

For the residents at Rosses Point
this is no end –
it starts their children’s dreams
and holds them to life,
roots them in communal grasses
that grow and will always grow.
I didn’t know
that where the weed-stalk masses
life’s abundance would overflow.

But where are their riches?
Cast in ditches by roadsides where
three hundred years of smiles,
vein-pulsing beliefs, busy thinkers,
sweet upswept streets,
all put wealth – the heaping of coin
upon coin till nothing can breathe –
aside and laugh. They live;
happening as they survive.

Inside the crumbled watchtower
I fling passion onto thought
onto nerve onto pen onto page
and then am limp,
like the carelessly treaded sage;
a child’s footprint.
What anguish did the watchers know
looking through the barred stone walls? –
their travelers were still gone.

In the swirling, swallowing night,
that drops like the judge’s gavel,
I write images of the sundry
numb-fingered seaside –
the birds call through the salt-stained air.
Fly away my wind-swept birds,
fly, fly till you reach my words
that are split among a thousand minds and cities.
Fly till the grass overcomes the tread,
till the sun succumbs to lead
poisoning and dawn’s jaw drops dead.

The lighthouse, the sprinkling showers
from the clouds that shroud and mask
the would-be sky, guide
the heart that falls inside my throat –
two hundred tons of blood
beat through its bulge – I’m alive
and live on, like this unhampered ground.
The sound of ripples, the rustle
of reeds, they bring me back
to the time-broken dock.

I sit and remember my friends –
calmness soaks in and through my bones –
I am and will be here always.
And when memory fails and fades
I will float the channel of everything,
beach upon this shore
and will be the grass and nothing more
until history becomes the future
and the first layer becomes the core.

Do you want to hear a story?

About the Deathly Hollow Tree

That sits upon the banks

Behind our old barn yard just behind our house

How ghastly nights of terror that reminisce the hangman’s nose

The leaves that sways upon the tree

As the winter nights prevail

A chilling freezing night of dread

For the coming winter rain

The nocturnal owl that sits alone

Upon the branch at night

Hoots a sound that echo’s with fear

As the stars shine down in the misty fog of night

Footsteps echo resounding into the early night of shade

The wanderer that strayed too long

Into the glooming mournful night

Now basking in fear at the sounds of night

As they echo through the trees

She stops to stare at the crackling sound

Of footsteps from the past

And quickly runs amuck instead

To run from those haunting footsteps that rustle in the dark

Breathlessly she watches the barren trees sway its ghostly dance

As the footsteps, get closer with her ever-beating heart

The echoes of the night invade her privacy of hell

As she watches and waits so intently in the dark

Only to be taken from her safe haven her hide away

So now the story goes of ghostly foots steps in the dark

After you hear them, you hear a mournful cry

So beware of the story around the hallow tree

Of how you can be lead astray from those footsteps from the past

©Kaila George 2013

There is a calm truth in this still dark night.
The hint of wind that is in the air is not enough to rustle the trees
but it is enough to break the silence with the breeze whispering over my ears.
It makes a hollow sound.
The bright full moon pierces the trees and casts shadows upon shadows.
The demons have yet to appear,
they are usually quiet but they rule the night.
Peaking in and out of the moonbeams,
they carry on with important business
existing only within my nightmare.
This night is the truth that is needed within a person.
Keeping balance with the goodness of the sunshine,
balance with night and day, evil and goodness.