Barbara Mitchell Poems

A trinity of vertebrae on a carpet of stone,
a cathedral of sea-worship built of bone.
Scoured clean of flesh that once powered you across oceons
following moon-paths, pulled by stars.
...

I saw a man chained to his eagle. The bird did not look happy at such an arrangement.
If I were that man, I thought, I would not choose to allow that raptor's beak so near my eyes
in case he were to think to pluck them out, like a hill lamb's.
And those great sails of wings, stretched to finger a passing breeze, could mantle my head
...

It wasn't always so, that love, the leech,
sucked this slow.
Full fast at first it battened on,
swelled like an aria sung to the poem
...

Under their blankets of old ruin are all that remains
and never-more seen, excepting with the mind's eye
ever-keen.
Simple to set the past free -
...