Susan Marie Watkins

Yellow is
Sharp as lemons
Clear as canary song
Pure as daffodils
...

Once,
In my youth,
Giddy with wine
I had a secret rendezvous.
...

At sunset,
Before a linen-draped altar,
Save for your fear,
She’d have pledged her troth
...

He comes from the East,
Exhaling energy,
Belching bolts of lightning,
Shooting solar flares from his eyes.
...

I’m light and free as a hollow-boned hawk
Gliding on the thermals
Above the vast, gray-brown prairie.
I’m a sharp-eyed bird of prey,
...

She spreads her wings,
Jumps into the air,
Ascending effortlessly.
In slow, thoughtful circles,
...

Cibola

The California sun
Streams from above
...

I breathe deeply
Inhaling prana
Expanding my lungs
Filling them with life force
...

Of the black abyss &
Hair-shirt gall, sulfur
Smoke & blood?
...

The Head of Ted Williams

The head of Ted Williams
Sleeps in a can of liquid nitrogen
...

It was the 2 a.m. phone calls
The denial
The fierce anger
Turned inward
...

monet's cat, marcel proust,
used to nap in the kitchen window
then jump down just like that
And tiptoe out to the garden,
...

rodin's cat sleeps contentely
amid the singing hammer blows
and dusty rubble of the atelier
but at night he awakens
...

gauguin's cat lived in neglect
amid the teeming emerald jungles of tahiti
she'd sleep alone on a broken chair in the corner
then jump down and stagger to the door
...

Butterflies & robins on a day of laughter & picnics,
New grass & the smell of freshly-turned earth
In the garden
Where memory, that hollow-eyed skull,
...

but mountains yes
mountains are like god
rippling in ancient jagged
saw-toothed pinnacles
...

The Thames, milky jade under a gray sky;
As Big Ben chimes &
Tennyson & Browning molder
Beneath their poet's slabs in Westminster
...

At night
van gogh’s cat hunts
beneath the swirling green flame
of a lone cypress
...

I'm light as a hollow-boned bird
Floating
Over misty forests & mossy glades
Where innocent brooks murmur
...

Love Is…

…a soaring pink void
Raw, black poison,
...