For the Disney print princess
who knows what she's about,
who finds fascinating worlds within dust cover jackets,
who sends smiles in parenthesis; lost love brackets
over classroom mid-drifts,
a bare silence interrupted by pure kindness;
for who walks in noise behind inaudible
commuters from this station to that station
all the way home and back out again on her family vacation,
who can match and pair t-shirts and jeans with
bowler hat crowns from the palace of queens,
who, for all we know, could eat with elbows on tables
and read not prose, but short fiction fables,
who wouldn’t hold doors open or say thank you
to bus men and their drivers,
who might smoke away her pay
with great plumes almost every day,

who might not be the girl I thought she was.

with all the religious fighting
it's easy to lose one's head
so much sectarian discord

people bring armageddon onto themselves
attracting negative energies
pulling meteors to earth

dip in your toes in the sand
and read magnitude in the sky
let the lapping sea be your preacher

Mother I swear
I'll plant seeds in the garden,
forgotten.

I've got a home in east Ohio
and a palm full of bees,
like thunder.

Drawers full of whiskey,
mother I'm trying.

Static voices set the sky to shambles.