Late October,
and they have assuredly returned.

A canopy of clusters.

At second glance
the leaves on the trees are wings.

Whisper into the dreamscape
for they sense your voice.

Revive them with your breath.

Hold out your hand
like you hold out hope.

The warm sound of flutterings.

Circadian clocks in their antennae,
a sense of where they've been
and where they are going.

The gift from their Creator
moves them in the right direction.

He didn’t mean to—
not really.

Just a flash of white,
a crescent moon of teeth
in soft rebellion.
My hand, the eclipse.
His eyes, twin puddles
spilled from stormclouds
he didn’t know he carried.

He backs away,
ears flattened like fallen wings,
tail tucked tight—
a question mark
curled in the dirt.

The bite stings less
than his trembling silence.

He watches me
as if I hold thunder
beneath my skin.

I crouch low.
He crawls lower,
guilt breathing louder
than either of us.

A shiver trails down
his brindle spine
like winter chasing spring.

And I—
I forgive him
before he even reaches
my outstretched palm.

As the days slip 
Into chill-filled air,
The watermelon dayz
They seem long gone.
Even with the degrees
Still in the moderate thirties,
I long for those hot, stuffy days
Where we twirled our towels
On our heads and smiled, seed-filled,
And none could distinguish where
Sweet and drippy watermelon grins
Started, and the sweat and slippery long ended.

Tar-dark world. The defining color is black, the inky night of her nocturnal hunts and the deep, bottomless dark of her alien retreat.

A watcher of men, she is everything and nothing. She might be too much of something, or too little of something else. Time will sort out the particulars.

There are no simple entry points – she demands engagement, and to be taken as a whole. Her discomfort is over her own allure, her undisturbed surface. It’s more about intuition and gesture than dialogue. They remain as echoes. They’ve made her beautiful in a real way, with hips and blemishes and dimples in her skin.

The imprint of the lives she begins to grapple with as her time on Earth extends, leads her to stop seeing herself as a mere conduit for her mission, and to start developing a sense of subjectivity.

Her life force is overlapping, shaping itself into a pattern of rings that simultaneously suggests a birth canal dilating, the stages of a rocket separating, and a lunar eclipse as seen through a telescope’s lens.

She's a life-form you can’t quite understand, but it’s carrying on relentlessly, like a beehive, moving backward through the constellations at first approach.

Melt like snow beneath a sunlit sky,
Let your burdens fade, let the old self die.
Each flake of sorrow, each shard of pride,
Softly dissolves as the streams confide.

Wash yourself from yourself, oh soul laid bare,
Find in the stillness a truth to declare.
The world will whisper, "Hold fast, don't yield,"
But love is not found in a fortress or shield.

It blooms in surrender, in silence profound,
In the space where no chains of the ego are bound.
Let the river cleanse what clings to the bone,
And hear the whispers of seeds you've sown.

Love, silent as a lily, takes root in your core,
No trumpet to herald, no need to implore.
Its petals unfold in the quiet of night,
A miracle formed in the absence of fight.

Not loud, not proud, not seeking the throne,
It thrives in a heart that has learned to atone.
Oh, let yourself vanish, dissolve in the stream,
For love is the dream within all other dreams.

The soul that releases, the self that refrains,
Shall find in its yielding what truly remains.
A garden eternal, where lilies reside,
Their fragrance a hymn to the love inside.

So melt like snow, and wash yourself free,
A vessel of grace for the vast, endless sea.
Let love grow quiet, yet steadfast and strong,
A lily's soft bloom is where you belong.