Her laughter pumps the gas, dumps the clutch shakes and rattles from each intersection
Her wet feet leave monster tracks long damp claws arching across the cement
Her hair grows brambles collecting thorns and twigs with the best of bushes
Her senses, corvid, snatching up dropped coins, pencils, paperclips
Her tongue unfettered, butterfly breath reels with snips of story and songs
Her eyes hold drops of honey, sticky sweet lashes follow the sun
sunflower cheeks blush cardamom on yellow velvet
glow butterfaced with dandelion kisses

Rough, regular under hand, stubbornly slate, unchanged unmoved.
if her soul is a garden there is a cinderblock there
holding down the sunflowers,
along with the grass at her core, it grows roots,
     but no moss.

Wide countertops speckled with vanilla sugar
plant vines ink-sketched along blank walls
flour clouds hover, ossify edges of brittle Betty Crocker’s
printed sunflowers, herbs peer between stacked spices,

plant vines ink-sketched on blank walls
leaves tremble where window breeze battles oven heat
printed sunflowers, herbs peer from between stacked spices
look down on three generations, Best 2 Egg cake

leaves tremble where window breeze battles oven heat
flour clouds hover, ossify pages of brittle Betty Crocker’s
look down on three generations, Best 2 Egg cake
and wide countertops speckled with vanilla sugar

Rain. Quenching summer’s green thirst, flaking hills rust. Pitted iron. Old bone beeches, alabaster reaching finger trunks and damp obsidian spines round crowns bronzed, pebbled umber arbors released, fluttering mast patina of carotenoids and iron browned and burnished from months of sun. Golden feathers molt from stands of birches, aluminum wire ghosts. First hard frost smokes up from the cinnamon stick curls of cherry leaves,
     and stainless pines in scrap metal hills.

Birch:** paper moon bark shakes lightly in a twilight breeze. sheds like antlers, Gaia’s horns. whispers shimmer, overlooking crumbling banks and silver tarns
Choke Cherry: wheel-turned silver bark, popcorn spotted. red rotted hearts they try to hide with arching height and pucker punch. too proud they sharpen sunshine lances that in time will fell them
Dogwood: gothic outline cryptic, cracked and ancient even young. rigid fingers yet outstretched lifting jade-pooled, budded gems. a flower or a piece of skin, raising pale veined, dimpled petals
Maple: tissue paper mast, thousand layers spongy under the high crown. breeding dust motes under the rusty flakes. sweet budding lips in spring that wait for fawn-spotted, sugared kisses
Oak:  knotted roots, the mealy earth that beneath a ponderous trunk. acorns ground to flour, crescent slivers cracked. oxidizing leaves shield the undergrowth’s small creatures
Pine: needles spring mattress below solemn peaks. silent cathedrals, pillars marking lost spring houses, crumbling cisterns. warm winter guardians of bronzed turkeys, heavy in sheltered branches
     For more information, walk.   Touch the pebbled hides and trembling skin. Examine the stained glass roof laid in patches. They sigh and speak, shout across oceans. Be informed it is not the wind.

Sails are set the tide has turned
the ship has past the break
time has set a glass to part the present-day
from that which came before.
Now I strain beneath cloying weight
wandering a barren ocean floor

Pressure cracks the creaking stillness
tears, where they seldom streamed before
Scars and stories
lost and shipwrecked on the shore

Where I, unknowing, looked for growth
I found – confused—decay.
Flood waters churning with a golden past
vanished, crumbled, swept away—
empty—void of all that built
the craft that sailed me to that day

I floated there a vacant hulk
becalmed, listing on my side
Amidst echoing fears a trickle comes
a return of trades and tide

fluttering wings behind the chest
ache to fly, escape distress
restlessness         
running, pounding footfalls
trailing ink and dust
ripping out old histories swept
like shadows, autumn leaves
dried
wind roar’s, a creature’s huffing breaths
a hundred animals’ ragged scraps
tied
a hundred thudding paws, round rabbit eyes
           compacted
ducked and weaving scales
challenge life with glistening teeth
snarling string
pins patches
of hides and growls, teeth and pinions, strength and sinew
into straining sails, a roving ship
a part of me.
gusts through patchwork roars and screams,
hull of a thousand long lived trees
of tales ingrained
a vessel flies with nature’s need
furious escape

Descended stars nestle in the trees outside the stadium
supplemental moonlight whitewashes the locusts
pearly lines linger on the tar black sea
crickets creak on the screen door of summer.
Round white stars swirl in elderberry blackness.
Stare. Long enough to see them meet head on
Collide. Spinning in slow motion
celestial pinballs sliding across exploding endless night
shattering sparks that rise gold
Embers into purple shaded trees
falling in silver
plating the grass to face the amaranthine dawn