I linger in the lamp-light of my room,
cling to the yellow bulb
and buzz around it
while the night becomes
quiet
and hungry outside.
I search
between the folds of my half-sleeping mind–
nothing much awake in there,
but the hum of a summer night,
visions of places I’ve not yet been.
So, I sleep without much to say,
dream about mountains and mosquito bites,
guitar circles and someone to sing to across the fire,
then a warm home
full of sleeping babes,
with a lamp in every room,
so they will always know the sun.

-Ellery Rose

The day is cold and calm,
kissing at my cheeks and ears,
staining me pink
and offering quiet advice–
I listen to it,
pay attention
to the tiny cardinal steps
in the tall snow
as the sun sets
and the faraway trees become orange mountains,
as the straight-up branches of a naked pear tree
point to God,
and I know that I am changing again.

So many days before
the warm-wind is back,
and I am looking for angels
beneath the dirt of my lawn,
where I sleep and dance and pray
in June;

I open my mouth and scream
into the ground,
so only the bugs and dead things know
what I am afraid of:
   that tomorrow I will be older
and still know nothing.

-Ellery Rose

The sky is bone-white
and guilty-faced,
and some horrible cry is preparing itself
between my two lips–
I have become lamb from sheep,
   regressed again;
I cannot stop screaming,
I cannot graze the land
without knowing that I am becoming
someone I have already been.

The things that make me happy,
that used to,
all exist in some other place:
   where I came from,
where I’ll never be again,
where the creek water is always warm
and the lamb-scream
is so deep inside of me
I cannot reach it with my fist.

- Ellery Rose