that's mrs. mediocrity to you

This is what I search for, again and again and again, the beauty in the ugliness, the pinwheel starburst of falling dead blooms, the light from a window reflecting nothing but snow, the pain in my neck and the crick in my back that reminds me how much I am alive.

The persistence of water, always finding a way. The cracks and wrinkles and fissures that speak of life. No surface remains unmarred, unless it’s perpetually hidden.

Today’s new coat of snow hides the old dirty version. Another layer of time added to the heap, a temporary stratum calendar.

Later, we’ll watch it melt and forget that it ever existed.

The river at our feet proving nothing more than motion.

Snow crystal transformed into sun glint.

Always rising.

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years ago
i planted two poplar trees
side by side
out front
in the corner of the yard

and one grew taller than the other
larger
thicker
stronger

and i feel like that’s probably
a metaphor for something
or at least it should be

but all i see are trees
and words about trees
stamped across the sky
in a tangle
of branches

all the meaning i prescribe
comes from within
me
or the trees
and what i choose to name
the one on the left

my cat
can zoom straight up the trunk
leaving scratches
and cheshire grin
in a weathered trunk
time map

but i like to sit
beneath the canopy
and listen
to stories
told by dancing
flicker leaves
in the shade
of yesterday’s
summer

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the promise

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Five days in, and this has been February. And all the stories I tell myself, all the excuses and plans and promises refuse to rise to the surface. I tell myself that it’s okay. That it’s always this way in this month, that it’s lack of sunshine, or fresh air, or freedom.

Silence. I surround myself with silence and I listen.

I hear whispers and promises, but not the words I crave. Patience becomes the antidote, and I work and fill the air with other people’s stories: radio, television, novels. Always a backdrop of sentence and syllable, and I wonder if I’m learning something useful, or filling my mind with capricious clutter. Or if it even matters.

I walk outside at night and search the sky, which these days, is always falling.

I feel tiny and insignificant, endless and universal. A snowflake lands on my palm and disappears before I can taste it. My tongue is empty and my skin is burning. Some nights, I don’t even wear a coat.

The dog stands still and looks into the woods, wishing for something to be there.

Me, too, I say. Me too.

Inside there’s a fire to sit beside, always the primordial companion.

There are no wolves to howl, but the coyotes are always laughing. My skin crawls at their sound, even as my lips curl into smile.

Their cause is survival, their joke life’s refrain.

Me, too, I say. Me too.

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and i climb
through the crisp
of color reduction
wearing winter’s
white
too tight
straight jacket
and a bracelet
of faceted ice

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Linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics today,
where Marina has us writing poems about winter.

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it was your dream and it shouldn’t
have been in my head but there it was
all memory and miniseries
claiming sleep in a gold rush
of measure

the audience laughed when i landed
and i thought perhaps i was dead
but you took my hand and lifted
til i stood three feet taller
than the mountain you sang
and could see each grey hair
on your head

in the hallway air-brushed footsteps
creaked out their endless
time-frame pattern
step here miss there hush now
tiptoe past the door of dragon

and the wind came howling
through the crack
in my window glass scar
left behind on a night when i dreamt
of forgetting and clambered to follow
the pale scratched trail
of prints in the snow beneath me

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to a party
of her own making

storied twice
and added never

confetti birds and
sun balloon

frosted ribbon
and dancing bear

carried home in the fold
of ripe chance

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an abundance of optimism
can’t ever be a bad thing

really

though sometimes the glare
can force you to turn
from those stricken
with the smile of this affliction

as you raise a filter
to the black hole sun
you grew up singing

singed by this little too much
and all that nothing
and color color everywhere

when some days you just want some

black and white

grey matters

taupe tenacity

anything to make you look away

because there is always dust in the corner

and hemingway said all you have to do
is write one true sentence

There is always dust in the corner.

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to make me believe in magic

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I feel the cold seeping into my bones
on a day too warm for that to be true.

But some days are like that,
filled with mysterious ache and ailment,
and I think, again,
how tied to the earth we all are,
and how often we forget to listen.

Everything feels frozen.
Time, my feet,
the calendar, this heart.

I find myself holding my breath,
watching the sky for a sign.

The crows will carry me home.

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