in a world filled with
shard and degradation
i am lost
i am silence
i am beauty
standing bent
but barely broken
i am thirst
i am hunger
i am courage
bleeding scent to
shadowed corners
i am beauty
i am silence
i am found
.
.
.
carried high above the sea of sky
(to keep from drowning, of course)
brittle fragile biting hiding
beauty
in a storm of hollow
promise
.
.
.
a tulip
refuses to rage
or go gentle
blown out
blowsed up
blundering on
through
tenacity’s
funeral
no tears
no fear
all clear
silent growth
tender reach
purple hope
eating sunshine
like spun
cotton candy
harnessed
by beauty’s
last song
.
.
.
if anne tyler shows up, we’ll have homesick for dessert
and she’ll teach us how to breathe and forgive
hemingway is sure to want venison, but after
an extra tall absinthe, he’ll make do with chicken
as miss plath lights the candles and serves up
bitter cookies dressed in marzipan and red
garth stein arrives dripping wet, a bit shy and
empty-handed, claiming the dog ate his casserole
which makes david wroblewski snort
and when erin morgenstern sits down we hear a barker
hawking tickets to a game of musical chairs
a plan mr. king is all for as the table suddenly expands
and the sun starts to sing in the corner
rosamunde pilcher brings bread pudding and roses
and insists that she sit next to salinger
though of course, his chair remains empty and
anne sexton is the life of the party, wearing pearls
and wry and eventually landing in vonnegut’s lap
while franzen sneers behind one perfect hand, his plate
filled with words no one else cares to sample
as toni morrison whispers with somerset maugham,
heads bent in an endless discussion
dostoevsky is straining to hear
cummings offers up broken cake and colored water
he pulls from the pockets of his coat
when edith wharton smiles at mark danielewski
picking leaves from the hem of emily’s dress
and mark helprin sits in the corner, alone
taking notes with long cold fingers
as laura ingalls passes chipped plates
.
.
.
.
i stand at the kitchen window long enough to grow roots
twisting down through the egg-cracked floor
into the fallible foundation of basement
this is my mirror and my afterlife and i know
i will haunt this place with my broad moon face
for seven wing-tipped generations
yet you taunt me with your hollow hope umbrage
moving through me as you glide overhead
my fingers the branch you choose to land on
though i never catch a wing or move a feather
and your song is more metaphor than melody
still, we know each other through this dark dirty pane
recognition confirmed by the silver you drop
even as you know i will tarnish-change to black
just like you and your silhouette of hands cupped
life running down my white sketched arms
as this sink filled with mud overflows
.
.
.
.
.
.
when you’re finally done being silent
when the night is two hours too long
when open is all you can be
racing gently towards the lost sun
.
It’s a good year for the spiders. Actually, it’s a good year for all the insects, I’m fairly certain that ants and snails will be in charge of everything fairly soon. (Perhaps they already are). But there are also fireflies and dragonflies and damselflies and butterflies.
In general, I don’t spray anything in my garden, so I’ve learned to coexist with the pretty bugs and the ugly ones, the chewed up leaves and the ruined buds. I admit to using natural methods to try and control the ant hills in my flower beds, and there have been some attacks on wasps, because well, they’re wasps.
The birds are quite happy with the assortment of delectables, and the insects that eat other insects, well, they are my friends. So, yes, spiders are my friends. Praying Mantis are my friends. Ladybugs are my friends. Toads and frogs, though unrelated, are also my friends. Japanese Beetles, no matter how much they dress themselves up all pretty, are the enemy. Flies drive me insane.
So I will take an ugly old spider any old day. I never kill them, even when I find them inside (which is fairly often). Mostly, I just let them be, unless there is someone particularly squeamish around, and then I take them outside.
There’s something magical about a spider’s web. Something magical about watching one spin down from the ceiling on an almost invisible thread.
Of course, I’m quite certain I wouldn’t feel that way if I were a fly.
And when it happens right over my head as I lay in bed reading, well, okay, I admit, that’s a little creepy.
But yesterday was that kind of day.
(And no, I didn’t kill it.)
She’d spent her entire life dancing on the edge of perfection, cutting hands and face and feet on the razor-thin precipice of need. Growth occurred, but randomly, and in all sorts of crazy directions.
The light was always what attracted her, when it was the dark she should have been reaching for. Everyone knows that all the real truths lie hidden in the shadows.
But she avoided the gloom like a child afraid of the monster beneath her bed.
She just wanted her moment in the sun.
When it came, she was surprised to see how many scars she had acquired along the way.
Even so, she tilted her face up and she smiled, opening her arms to embrace the warmth upon her skin.
.
.
.
