I lick my wounds with
a sorbet sunset tongue
A slurp so icy thick and orange that it covers elephant horizons
My pain---a mirrored cloud skyscraper
it is king to
Grief
A planet where there are never enough parking spaces
If you find a place to rest
it will cost you an over- romanticized sensory memory
and then you will never be able to sleep again
I took up space
Decided I would sing among the meadows
Black filled my cracks and
my clothes started to wear me.
Everyone tries to hug me
They start their sentences with a dry, choking,  "at least."
I start to resent strangulation
Oxygen is my mother
She shows up and holds my hands tenderly,
rubbing her fingertips over my nail beds
I beg her to stay
to swaddle me and morph me into ten-year-old-me
She just murmurs, "me too."
"I want that too."

Could I be cotton?
Or the light that fills checkered New York cockroach apartments?
Could I be anything but a woman who is grieving over a black shelled conman?

cascading through the storm surge
I reach for the vine
but drown in my addiction

You, moon

Pulling my tides

To flowing movement when i strive to be still

You, young moon

Agitating roots to
Push soil

When all oak requires is acorn rest

Yes you,
Moon

Mistress movement

Cycling countryside to mock silly cities falling down.


Water water everyone unable
To
Stagnate
Or drown thanks to you,
Moon

arise vehement sea
and hammer
with your suffering fists
all the crags
and lonely stones
upon the shores of
the naked coast

where crouches
at edge of bluff
the foundations raw
cantilevered walls
and the arcing buttresses
that shelter dreams
held secret

hurl your agonized and
eager waters
at stone and mortar
shake the bedrock
on which rest
the touchstones
in the deepest cellars

let your echoing tremors
buffet and rebound
within the resonant chambers
hidden below

your ululating winds
calling to memories
in their veiled towers
peering from windows
narrow and high

their fluttering lamps
clinging to the light

they search the tumult
with eyes fearful and uncertain
cloaking forsaken desires
that thirst without end

The sun is wondering
if it should dive into the sea
while two wanderers still play
on the edges of the dark
beckoning it to stay
just a little longer.

For just a short distance away
the bright gold lingers
in the shallows
where they could tiptoe
into the iridescent rippling.

The shimmering surges
on the margins
where the waves have lost their energy
and the tide is a glassy placid.

I am wondering
like the sun
if it is time to set
or if I should wade into the rippling light.

I move through the woods in ritual
The trees have shed their leaves like
Third sons and eldest daughters,
They cling bravely until the wind uncurls their hands
and bears them away from home.  
A scavenger, I search them out, hold them between finger and thumb,
Their last embrace.

Sometimes I will pluck a fading life from a branch,
melded amber and crimson,
the dregs of sun in their veins,
offered in the last vibrance of summer’s heat.
At home, I press them between pages,
tiny spells of weight and gravity
cast to keep their color.
I know this magic,
Autumn and I are kindred in this,
Our eyes are the same soft green and sepia of hiraeth
cradles of remembrance,
nets always cast back into memory.
Like all memories
There are a thousand useless,
The umber of old blood, trodden underfoot,
the seconds that dripped by unmarked.
But we hold the fragile, happy few,
High upon a shelf
the glowing phosphorus of laughter
The currant red of a last kiss
Returned to and returned to
Like an unanswered prayer.