When I was born
a wraith flew in the window
and sucked out my breath.
As I turned from ash to black
...
Morning scratches at the glass.
and the screen glares back white.
Boiling water recalls the heat of thoughts,
a small bird lands on a branch of sunrise.
...
She mixes words
like a wizard whips out a spell,
better yet, like a chef
whose batter boasts
...
Morning snowflakes clot the air,
rest in the nook of an old fedora.
The shop doors are still locked.
A red sweater.Blue eyes glance
...
I see you inside your eyes
and you've run away.
I see you in a sunset fading
...
What you see when you look:
The moon and the sun
along the same line
when fire and frost
...
Snow fell in a thicket of white,
melted in rivulets along the outside
of a bistro window, framing the image of ‘us.'
I glanced up into whiskey eyes
...
Sometimes pills are like happy dogs.
Swallow them down and they taste like puppy heaven.
Your rear begins to wag, your tongue hangs down
And you suddenly realize that there's nothing better
...
I settled into your
cumulous pillow,
dreamt of peacocks
running four corners of a fence
...
because I think it's amazing to be alive.
Sometimes when my eyes open, I just say,
thanks. It wasn't always this way.
And that's why I'm so grateful about it.
...
Smoky twilight sun along highway
and voices snap along sagging wires
as pink quartzite fog smolders,
recalls the fizz of sparkling rosé.
...
We cared for a tiny mouse,
but still he died.
It was running from a crow,
silly rodent
...
I don't know why he hoots outside my bed
Sweet calming notes he holds and slurs in thirds
I wake out of my bones and fly this thread
Replete with loves that ring beyond my words
...
A woman's eyes
have touched the scene, seared it
into a still life, no
a book of philosophy
...
They insert 365 days into her petite post-it frame
until she is no more than a silhouetted statue
baking in light, dropping samples
like an evangelical shopper at a big box store.
...
||Look your lover in the eye,
leap through the blinking
pendulum past a sleeping
lens. Pupil and Iris unfurl
...
Ocean buzzing with murmurs,
she picks up a shell embedded within the grit
of a googleplex of grains plus one.
Her mind spirals into the bone as she searches
...
In The Nest Of A Sparrow
When I was born
a wraith flew in the window
and sucked out my breath.
As I turned from ash to black
I crumbled in the doctor's arms
and flew out,
weightless like the magic
of a sparrow that sings
to beckon crows.
When my mother cried out
I hardened into the shell
of a human and burrowed
into her arms.
When my eyes opened
I possessed wisdom
of birds and spirits,
yet they still insisted
on excising my wings.
No longer able to fly
I cried for milk and shelter
until the day the wraith returned
and flushed me into soil
where I grew into a poppy
that was picked to nestle
in the nest of a sparrow.
What a gift you have To pierce the heart and soul With gracious words That say it All.