This is not just an ordinary day
like yesterday or the day before
this day I’ll open a door
to a garden alive in dark clay
hummingbirds searching for paradise
in a heat wave scorching and dry
honeybees saying goodbye
mothers in a war made of sacrifice

No ordinary day this one
I’ll find a way out of sadness
through an hour of madness
out of moments undone
taking thirty minutes for my lover
where we touch our toes
take a risk to expose
mistakes we were loathe to uncover.

We will create this present day
halfway out of old into something new and bold.

I am a slave to the sounds of
poetry. The rhymes of lovers
pledges, the colors of tanned
songs sing to my imagination.  

Poems drape over me like
dresses on women.  I see
colors and patterns reach
with tender fingers. Vowels
touch and with moist
lips, rhyme.

But there are no poems
here in Gilead,
no epic washing away of lines
on the waves of the

final

flood.