What She Look Like?
  
…Like one
tenderly hushing
water in her lap
Elemental peace
No place to go
No more to be
…Like the ocean
in the background
of a photo on a warm spring day
belying
rage
and the random possible
thrash--

out!

at all guilty ******* in her path
Toss in the next sentient soul
who should happen to pass
within range
who should have seen
who should have known
what a storm could do….

Moody in the aftermath
and sorrier than rain
With the tide in retreat
grumbling excuses
Hiding out waist-deep in dusk’s Merlot
Waiting for night to sleep it off

to heal the rifts
cleanse the shame

Rising
yellow, bright— and

“What the hell happened, here?!”

____


Her hair
a winter’s tragedy of trees
upside down—
No wait— the wind has put her right
to ragged random branches
swaying, wet with intermittent hues
of dark and silver
caught in collar, flying inelegant and free
at the shoulders of the levee
tossed and softening shyly
sagging jaw and nose a stump of tree
All perspective changes…

if you watch a while—

She’ll raise her eyes
into the sunset
to catch an eagle
entering
flight

…and then you might…

___

She looks like—
a pudgy robin
querying grass
mud soaked
that hides the fire of her breast
tugging at a worm
more than half her length
“I will feed them, **** you!
Give it up, you son of a snake!”
_____

...Don’t miss her hour of music though
for anything
Encroaching darkness
from the rooftops
she listens to the hearts she breaks

Remember this in winter
she can give but she will take
it out on February
when you’re longing
for her

am I become an asterisk in your life,
a small reminder of what once was soul-deep,
was the trumpet-radiance of character?
I wander, unshod, in the wilderness created of myself,
to revisit a dystopian dream, where my soul-scars
bleach white from time’s long goodbye
and my caged heart sings a canary’s song to no one

am I become Bukowski’s consummation of grief
dancing on thorns to a choreography of remorse
to a dissonancy of love?

when did I become a mere star-point in your
wintercircle, lost in the wilderness of your sky,

an asterisk abandoned in your asterism?


c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

This town wreaks of loneliness
Chipped paint and boarded brick shells
A water tower in need of repair , the bewitching
chime of the ten o'clock courthouse bells
The tapping of tin on former antebellum mansions
The lonely wail of city hounds
The sound of jet planes high above
a forgotten , country town* ...