The grass on my palm is pining.
The dogwood blossoms fear no risk.
We are blackberry winter in waiting.

But the walnut rests,
until the final frost has passed.
I'll wait as long, or longer, for a kiss.

We have felt the gentle pressing of time
Its palms on our chests.
Together hand in hand we breathed in sync
Against the weight,
Plotting our escape,
Breaking the molds man made for us,
And carving out a new caverns in the clay
Flooding them with joy,
Recasting our forms, in stranger poses.

One day we will be too weak
to carve,
We will step back to admire
our work:
Our caverns,
Carved
Over years
So deep.
Sweeping sculptures
left behind.
The pressure of the earth above,
pressing down
again.
And the press won't feel
as gentle.
We will
be tired,
too weak
to breath
against it.

It's ok.

Holding
Hands
We will
Sink
Into
The
Earth.

What do I do with this longing?
no bags can carry it.
I grab at the mist
it floats around my head,
clouding my vision.
Outstretched hand returns with nothing.
An inkling of wetness, or something.

Waiting for the vibration in my pocket
a sensation
as close to aviation
as I can find.
To a dragonfly's wings.

You were a pile of bones.
I loved you before I met you,
blindly as one should, staring at your photo through a phone.

I didn't know, but my heart knew, as I sat nervously in the car.
Scenarios of sickness,
unfolding in my brain,
spilling out like oil.
I tried to clean up, but everything was already greasy and black--
primed for you to leave me,
before you even laid down on my lap.

Then I held you.
You felt so soft,
and gentle.
But, instead of joy,
I felt dread.
You were too calm.
You didn't wiggle, or whine.
I said "It's probably fine,"
but your body was ticking like a bomb.

I feel foolish, dear pup,
ashamed of my dreams on the way home,
of you running, and playing, and growing up.

But you did not play,
and you did not eat.
You were so tired, and woeful, and weak.
I knew when I heard
your little heartbeat,
and your raspy breath,
right next to my ear as I slept.

And the next day,
on a cold metal table,
you slipped away quietly.
I hope that you know I loved you entirely.

Aside from crying,
all I can manage to do now, is to laugh.
Because, while grasping at straws I had thought
"You can't spell Olive without the word 'live.' "
What a cruel cosmic gaffe.

There's a woman drenched in blue
walking in a cold stone room
circling in a blinded way--riddles raddling out of her brain
and into a shoe.
what to do, what to do.
she walks with armoured gate.
hardened in nature,
speaking her truth,
she holds a hand high to measure
her worth
and it begs the question: do we believe her?
I don't dare go inside,
for worth dwindles with time.
the shelf life on her truth--
though certainly dire,
is short and sweet as vermouth
and society must hear him
before lighting the pyre.
I, a reporter,
root for her-- her biggest supporter.
through a peep hole I can see
the man, and then she.
but I can't type too loud, or the alarm will sound--
one eyelid closed, ball point pen stabbing down
to release some subliminal seismic rapture:
invisible to me, but gushing all around.
Our collective furry, coming un-wound
while unwavering folks still capture
a crooning boy in their arms
despite his cloying false charms.
She throws the shoe, blind,
spilling its rhyme
onto the stone floor
a moment of quiet
and some piece of mind...
but ending somehow
the same as before:
There's a woman drenched in blue
walking in a cold stone room
circling in a blinded way--riddles raddling out of her brain
and into a shoe.
what to do, what to do.

My heart is skyward.
I feel light at the sound of low flying planes, recalling my home now so sweetly.

I am a wilted Trilium,
for months fed by a foreign smoggy sun, with roots longingly outstretched for rich appalachian loam,
but grasping instead at the plumes of dust left behind overcrowded buses.

Still, I've grown.

Underneath the overhead window, overlooking a chaotic city,
on cotton sheets,
gathering breath longingly like
soft blades of sawtooth grass in a woven basket,
I store them in this vessel, the size of a pea.

As humans we cannot truly feel the present moment,
as all sensations of the present have already been devoured by the past by the time our brains can reckon with them.

With each word that you read of this poem, another micro moment will have passed, and the seeds sewn by your consciousness will already be
setting to sprout.


But underneath the overhead window, my fingers circle the center of my sensation,
and my consciousness is caught beneath their pressure,
and submits
to their rhythm.

Outside a storm converges. I hear soft thunder,
the wet smell of rain, and the pinging of
droplets.
I devour their energy between my legs,
surging into a complete connectedness
with the world
and with myself.

And although the present charges ahead, I’m carried now languidly with it: eyes closed, legs spread, breathing the world in deeply.