I recall your eyes as the sky looking back at me

loosed from its cage
my heart sails on the high    hot thermal
of my soul
into your sky-eyes
into the blue and away from my life
toward my Life

I am phoenix    arising
from the ashy embers of what was
into the future what-is
carried on flights of feathers
into

the sky looking back at me


c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater

wander down with gentle rains
along the furrows dug along those
long straight rows out
back

I seep and trickle
flow among each drop
seek the lowest spot
and gather

low with my kin
follow gravity to its
beginning

to the neediest root
the dryest eye
make tears

a pied pipers eye
to cry at the  drop of a
small seed

into the next cloud
to serenade
each fallen hero

making life renew
stop
and look

becoming
moist
I am

just dew
and heaven
mists

on this rumbling
              stretch of tundra
                  no trees reach up
                     to soothe the sky
                     there is a pulling down
                  of wind tunnel vortex
               like conifers in reverse
          an icy howl
in the bonechill
               of time
Translucent holes,
         perfectly round, are dug
                in glacial archeology
                  and in the sea below
               gelid creatures lurk,
           half-frozen
         in the history of my
                                        soul
Only moss and lichens
grow on the rock,
somehow softening the
rugged textures
of the wild landscapes
that seethe
          just beneath my skin
and there, just
shy of the surface
is a quickening
a subtle pulse of veins
that pumps life
between the gales of
my heart's steppes
flushing out
           the pain
somewhere
deep
      within the private lotus
of my being
folioles unfurl
leafy shapes around
my organs
wrapping them like gifts
          as they undulate in whorls
opening my petals
in renewed consciousness
and deliberation
as a new kind of  
           stamen
                rises
    dusty pollen
powdery
budding ripeness
       bursting up
       and out
   of my deepest
       centered
whirlpool pistil
nectar dripping
in viscous webs,
to be caught upon
the tongue of
a new dawning
My silky outer
wings of vegetation,
slender stalks of
          filaments and anther
have been turned
into hot steel
They protect
    the tender vulnerable
                   when burned
as poison words held up to my
watchful eyes,
                   are properly discerned
I give myself over
to this new power,
my back arched to fully embrace
what is to come,
a universe calling thunder,
the old patterns undone
I am ready
to reveal my all
as the goddess deep within
comes to release my gold
suffusing light through skin
conjured from me
a relentless strength,
ever-growing,
                now tenfold
rising way past
soft-lit stratospheres
and orbiting
               to
                 bold