In this desert
I touch the ocean within,
here where I abandon all plans,
I spend hours watching cloud formations
of flowers blooming violet, red.
I travel to the sanctuary of the soul
each morning, sit silent
at the altar of dawn.

The Mountain keeps all secrets. Crusted lichen on timeworn boulders. High altitude longing for alpine daisies. Carefree blossoms, long ago plucked, gone to seed, restless in the fertile ground.  Wildflowers bloom shortly sweet, fleeting paintbrush to layered canvas. Fairy slippers lost on crumbling doorsteps. Glacier lilies pressed between avalanched pages.  Forget-me-nots in forgotten blue hollows. The common harebell feels anything but common when seen through a lover's eyes. Forest tiger, your bulbs taste bitter. Purple lupines sage with fuzzy-leafed logic.  Fireweed, *****, unadorned, eternally reaching. Lousewort, spreading phlox, leave this scarlet alone.  Listen to Indian Henry, it's bad luck to trample what is sacred. The devil dreams behind steep and sheltered walls. Keep to the Wonderland, bypass this Trail of Shadows.  Seek ancient hunting grounds, steadfast shelter in the wooded clearing.  There is no pearly everlasting along these old trails.  Paradise lost may never be regained.

She was wild like skinny dipping at midnight, stars watching overhead and falling in love with moonlight. The way it lay upon her skin made the ocean envious of her depths within and sometimes between us. She was my sister, not in blood but in orbit. A Venus to my Earth, forged from the same collapsing star and if the universe was in fact to be infinite then this moment would happen again, and again, and again an immeasurable number of times. I found comfort in this thought, knowing though our existence was meaningless, it was still full of feeling, and this feeling, right now, it insisted on existing forever.

and again, the gritty path,
for visiting the houses, ruined.
time fled and life stood still,
strangled in suspension points.

i come, to collect lonesomeness,
feed my senses upon bygones.

window sills to inner spaces.
motherhood.

there, the place of a fire,
the grime inks a flame in black,
silhouetted.

crock pots, iron pots,
cracked, bumped.
soup. boiling.smoking.
cendrillons wrinkling
by the fireplace
in yellowished orange blossom gowns.

a skeleton of a bed.

leaning roof.

a wall in blue.

the view from the back window.
the door to the backyard.

houses grow blind.
i come
to lend them my eyes.
willingly.

eventually they'll have me,
bind me, seed me,
a tree-creeper to sight
the swallows, tell them
we have a vacant eave
in a falling roof.

Ten black crows
in a red-budded
cottonwood tree
basking in the eerie
glow of the waning sun
bruised, livid sky
weighted air
waves shush, shush
on the receding tide
serenity reigns
but I can feel it
hovering offshore
a curled fist
wound tight
ready to strike

stars are tiny holes
in Heaven's carpet
and they say that
humans are made
from the dust
that falls
through them
and can't get back home.

lotus rising in my hands,
heat that heals the broken man.
clocks with crooked arms that span,
lands that hold the emerald pain.

inside her ribcage,
beneath her hide,
snow melts,
rivers grow,
rushing and raging,
into everything we know.

washing a furrowed countenance,
into crumbled crystal and sea glass sand,
where castles rise and fall,
waxing and waning,
endless dying,
endless rebirth,
rising and falling,
again and again.

~Lana Maree Haas