as i swim through center
muddy toes, bony fingers, brittle bones
i will not drown and the sky keeps changing
clouds of starlings dance in pulse and parody
and i smile at the futility of standing
.
float and eddy
swirl and bend
let go let go let go
.
it’s all happening
.
.
.
.
even the stars
were off kilter
last night
orion laying low
on the horizon
the southern cross
trying to kiss
cassiopeia
.
my feet were on the ground
but my heart kept floating
.
ursa major
poised to capture
every tear
.
.
.
.
i search for beauty in the bones of every skeleton
architecture is the art of building frames
i thought i was a writer once, then i became human
the sky is a cage built for starlings
i am the ghost of my grandmother, re-contrived
.
all the leaves have fallen now and the wind has moved on
we stand naked in the weak winter sunshine,
refusing the invitation to bend
.
.
.
.
I stand on these acres of history, long fallow fields of tears forgotten and brittle reminders of years blown by, remembering how once we grew green shoots of conflict and the next spring plowed them under, making food for the forest of memory we drive through with broken blade, always turning earth, always searching for what we’ve buried. But the worm always works alone, adding air and rich casting to this hard-baked, clay-caked soil, choked with rock and seed and ancient bone. This is my home, this place where dinner is served at noon and the sky is always hungry. I pose on one foot in the shade of a tree that neither of us ever mentions, a scarecrow of deliverance for the red cardinal who lands on my shoulder and feeds me the coldest hour. Our nests have become identical, and you laugh as you toss broken frame and bent missive in a fit of tidy redemption. There are no berries here, no reward for existing. There is only wind and the silence of everything, whistle warning us through each night.
my skin crackles with
growth and tick tocking question
unanswered roots entwine
.
.
.
.
