Anne M

Anne M Sep 2021

9/27/2021

There’s reveille
and there’s reverie
and there’s the all-too-wakeful revelation
that your dreaming heart
has been beaten in time
to the rhythm of a Keats sonnet
every year since you first read it,
sixteen and leftfisted
at a righthanded desk
in the center of a
—you only now realize—
ironically yellow-bricked classroom.

You’re older than he ever grew.
Trapped on a shore
of the biggest island
no one told you until recently
you could leave.
So you seek water.
And a horizon that blurs
when you look for too long.
Fishbowled lenses never broken
yet perpetually breaking the surface.

Anne M Aug 2021

rise over run

you know the trail,
but have you seen it at seven?
with the spanish moss?
the sprinklers on?
feet finding the familiar
path back toward
the sun you'll spin
another day around.

alliteration isn't only good for writing, babe.
consonance can set a friendly pace.

so mind the Ps & Qs, my love,
and while you're at it, the As and Us
that rest on a tongue pressed
to the back of the teeth.
the rhyme to the beats
the cushion you always wish
--halfway to home--
these shoes were to your knees.

Anne M Aug 2021

martyrs & miscreants

All my
ex-lovers were martyrs
and miscreants. But I
want I wait I want to
love someone who
stands
still.
A tree
on whom
it's safe to lean.

Anne M Aug 2021

smoke (as a habit)

smoke (as a habit)
has started to gather
in the upper parts of an untrue sky
casting the gold
nature of sunset
on the mid-morning walkers who
--for the moment--find
breathing easy again.

Anne M Aug 2021

kintsugi

dried tears may as well
be painted gold on a mourning face.
the acknowledgement of so many breaks.

the only way forward now is through.
mending made evident
in the tracks of a beautiful glue.

Anne M Jan 2021

Shower (haiku)

after a rainstorm
each path is a parable
of recovery.

Anne M Jan 2021

Turtle(dove) Hill

Lovebirds gravitate to the same perch
beneath the well-feathered branches
of old cypresses (cypressi?)
that too many years ago
were uprooted and planted
on this side of the hill.

Up the now-mirrored steps
two bodies lean
from a spot you'd swear
is halfway between
the waters you wander through
and the oceans you wonder for.

Measured to the centimeter,
a ruler still won't tell you
the toll these trips take
on the limbs sprouting up from the sand
grounding down to the land
reaching out only to end in another empty hand.

But still the lovebirds pause here
in the man-made wonder
that may as well be a wayside inn
for all the shelter it gives
to those on the journey
with only one end.