heart, beat you hard within this breast
to help me remember
the excitement of languorous ardor
the texture of bristle against neck
the slap of moisture in an arid land

heart, beat you hard within this breast
as flood meets heated desert
and life begins anew



copyright/all rights reserved Audrey Howitt 2011

Penciled moments
Brief
Carved out of the time between
Ancillary shadows of forgotten emotions
Etched in the marks on the score before me
Rendered helpless
I am pinned by the eye of the composer.
Who decides what emotion creeps now beneath this line?
Conductor
Composer
Singer?
Disparate thoughts.
Where is the common ground?




Copyright/All rights reserved Audrey Howitt 2011

How did it happen,

That I am privy to your heart

But you, not to mine?

The wishing of worlds long asleep

Will not change the damage done.

Sleep, my heart drowning in sorrow,

Like the soft rain

Which rolls in on a misty morning.

Catch my hope

Before it ripens into conscious thought

And furtively deposit seeds of tears

To replenish salted earth.

Scorched heart, you lie still

Heavy with the grief

Of unexpressed love

Which now must hide

Behind shuttered eyes.

My sorrow, unavailing.

You will not change

And I cannot bear it.



Copyright/All rights reserved Audrey Howitt 2011

By eaves, burdened by the weight of pendulous leaves
Dropped by spent trees
The pulse of sap
Stilled within them.

By branches curtseying and bending tunefully
In anticipation of the dance they are called to
By gossiping winds
unable to hold their chatter.

By sleeping dog, untroubled by arthritic knees
As she chases industrious squirrels
Whispering death to them in stifled barks
Pleasure outpouring the soft container of her dreams.

Autumn, her breath tinged with the gold of promised darkness,
Exhales gently across the waiting land
And dusk seeps
Through closed lids
To meet her lover
As night descends.



Copyright/All Rights Reserved Audrey Howitt 2011

You are my heart and upon it
I have etched my secret hopes for you:
My hope that you burn brightly, and long—
That your most heartfelt desires lash themselves
Upon the winds of passion
And that your heart’s love flows
Out of eyes and mouth to the tuneful ears
Of those who surround you.
That hope survives and blooms in the inclement weather
Of disappointment—
That you find and etch your secret desires
For your own child—
And that when I am gone,
That in a flowering corner of your soul
That you feel my love for you—


Copyright/All Rights Reserved Audrey Howitt 2011

The tv blares
Its empty promises
Of laughter and easy ***.
If I look like her
Will I get laid?
And for a moment,
My 55 year old body
Remembers what it was
To look like that.
The tv goes off and
I go read a book.



copyright/all rights reserved Audrey Howitt 2011

Talented fool that I am,
I keep looking for myself
In the words that I write,
And I come up empty.




Copyright/All rights reserved  Audrey Howitt 2011