This skin I’ve worn
has fit me snug
and served me well
for some time now
But I feel it shifting,
bristling,
drying out,
curling up
I know the day
is coming soon
when I must
shrug it off
I have carried as much
of the past as would
cling to me
Like a glacier drags
the gravel of decades
behind it
And I am finally ready
to empty into the sea.

– mrg

Take a walk with me
through my soul, over
miles and miles of open land

Through the forests
brimming with honeysuckle
and songbirds

Along the jagged majesty of indigo
mountains jutting like saw teeth
from the pink-gummed horizon.

Do you see? How you color
the sky over it all?

Watch golden hour spill like a
molten avalanche across the valley –
sunset planting a rose in every shadow.

– mrg

The mind is a beast
we are all tasked with
taming

But how? When mine
ducks every lasso, throws
me from the saddle, kicks
dirt in my mouth

Is an ocean of riling blood
beneath the throbbing
bruise of sky

Colliding thunderheads
thicker than smoke threatening
a slaughter of rain

And I:
shipwrecked in its mess

A splintered mast and torn
sail swallowed by a wall of
water black as my most
poisoned thoughts

Sinking like a pearl to the
shifting, tectonic floor of
my own body

Drawing breath through
a mouthful of sand, my pruning
hands bound by the mangled
leather of a pair of reins

Yet reins cannot tame the sea.

– mrg