Brassavola nodosa*: Lady of the Night

Drinking deep the cold water
with her loose, slender petals
that wrap the aspidistra tree,
she waits, just before dusk
to release her moonlit fragrance.

Dark welcomes this ghost-white
orchid that proves love blooms
in nature with a night to drown
the stillness of a leafy bedding.

The wild-eyed child opens her gaze
to this wonder hidden in kudzu vines
of a Brazilian forest that does not sleep
so soundly with its dragonflies.

Only the moon knows she speaks
of fallen petals and longed for rain.

On the Summer Solstice
Half asleep wine-flushed stumbling on the internal billows.


Here is Where We Live
We are a companion to the owls with countless white moons.


Aurora Borealis
The earliest sway of dreamscapes came with dancing ghosts.


When Shall I get back to that Other World?
Thunder echoes off the walls of a tall obese world, pregnant & shifting.


On the Winter Solstice
Above the mountains earth drinks the sun quietly in the black Alaskan forest.


When People in the Lower 48 Marvel**
All I want to tell them is how living in its dark bitter sadness is a voyage.

I hear bones twitch in the flower bed
turning over their trembling groan to the
deep soil with bitter solitude in some strange way.
Autumn swirled her cracked wind that shook the
willowed branches as I clung desperately to my
rhythm in the wilderness blindly following the
flicker of an empyreal garden that glowed
along the path in a mysterious way.
And me happiest, when the earth offers
a place to sleep amongst the billows of the sky.
Most beautiful as sunlight pours itself across
my body, a reminder of simply being alive.

How many years will it take me to
forget the days we lapped the corners
of your mother's artless garden
tottering on Autumn's fruitless season.

The sunken mornings brought winds of
rupture in our chests; mingling in our
underwear, standing in the doorway
while I whistled you a song about how
intimacy can be undoubtedly forgettable like the
moon-blued waves we saw the weekend before
sleeping on the south shores of Astoria.

I expected every wave would have swallowed us up.
Sea salt stuck in my scrawny hair and we wasted
the afternoons trembling beneath layers of
flickering guilt. This moment, yearned to have
its imprint swollen shut into the crevice of my bones.
But now, its tides later and you married last October
and I don't see the point in remembering you.
Now half-drunk on an absentee love.

My early sea town home came
With strides of colossal change floating between
The marrow of my bones; gnawing inside.

Chance always showed me where to go
Landing near deep, blue-green waves
That washed the soft slumber from my eyes.

Perlious seas to cover the silence of a murmurous beauty
Pouring into the Colombia Gorge that flows a horizen-line
Against the rim of peaceful strangeness in the city.

Darkening dusk hovered in the wide quietness
Of Forest Park with lanterns lit along the west coast
while I counted the spaces of plum-colored stars.

There I went running on the hills through the virescent woods
Of tall evergreen trees dripping wanton rain into the hollows of a wet earth.
Dressed in ghost-white like a wayward drifter.

Night, emitted a warmth of drunken red wine
With tireless voices laugh shaken to beats of ethereal music.
Departure struck me with sudden change to a new home.

Ripped away and fixed in the belief of happenstance.
Always to remember the feeling of being young
On this cold night in Oregon.

She endures the internal progression
of a lingering goodbye.
Sifting through the waters
as days become years.
Yearning for tranquil solitude
to offer closure.

Split between two halves.
The moons are plenty full of madness
with a world of ever changing seasons.

Suddenly the rains begin
and she sits beneath the canopy tree
contemplating her next hour.

Twenty-three years now and the same sun rises
along the rim of a big blue sky with layered clouds.
A myriad of kaleidoscopic colors leaks through
surrounding me with nostalgic warmth.
Remembering everything that brought me here.

That sticky, unbearable Texas heat
whirling in the wind of a summer afternoon.
Sleeveless dress, sunburnt skin, watermelon smile.
Five years of beauty growing into a thin young girl
who wanted to learn about everything,
Shifting into the youth of an actress in an over-the-top
melodramatic performance at a local theatre.
Selling art and collecting coins to travel
across our globe, and then,
my first plane ticket to Vietnam.

Nineteen came dressed in bittersweet wanderlust.
Packed my bags and drove my car to Portland, Oregon.
Four cameras, disheveled notebooks, ink-stained hands.
Those tall forest trees of enchantment,
a photographer's dream.
Traveling down the west coast to desert lands:
Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Fe.

Somewhere in there I ended up sleeping beneath the stars
with a belly full of wine in Alaska.
The summer solstice singing me a song while tears brim up my eyes
because the world has never looked more lovely.
Aurora borealis shimmering her lights above
a reflecting ocean of pastel
Reds and golds, blues and pinks.

A lucky lady who has touched corners
of love and sadness and wonder.
Burned imprints of goodbyes
in the crevices of my mind, but this is who I am.
Living and breathing in this extravagance.