Wait lifter

Where I have sometimes
pled with pronounced pain,
head nestled in a pillow,

I find myself
Now
heaving
and overcome-
weeping with joy
at the alignment,

at how far
these things travel
and come back around.

And I levitate
the world-

at least it feels this way

in the middle.



Image of art installation Title: Levitated Mass by artist Michael Heizer at Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Hunt(her)

She said to me the strangest thing,

I want to smell her alone-
away from the others
out of the masked scent
of deer and leaves-

The muse has her motives.

I am still
here
for you to pick up
the web-line
and feel me
waiting
for you
to find me
First.

I must warn you,
to not go too far or listen in too deep for
the Metaphor man who
speaks with more than his tongue.

It takes a second.

Imagine how he looks
back,
being a target is merely
one point to shoot for.




Painting by J. Alden Weir, 'Hunter and dogs' c. 1912 in [Public domain].

The Queen ties her rainbows from the ball

I entered the living room on Sunday in the late afternoon
with a basket of soiled laundry and on the floor lay the Queen,
sprawled out in a melancholy pool,
lyrics from her lips left hanging there aloft.

Drained and slightly dazed, she did not notice she had been singing,
her face was painted with dark minerals. Naturally,
she was shocked to see me, her pupils opened even more,
And her cheeks became velvety.

A little surprised to see her this disheveled way,
I asked if she was expecting rain-
teasing her mud faced tribal marks.
She said her body hurt, seriously, she had been dancing all night.
She did not want to break out.
With her toes pointed in my direction, resemblance spreads
like cold air. I am just stretching, she adds,
reaching out and away even more.

Interrupting us came a gentle tap-rapping at the door.
And after so many months of the same still frugal
air, the door began to swell inside its crust.
With a mustered force, she pried open the door,
as if held against her and boldly before her came an unexpected visitor,
A hint of something she mist, it had started to drizzle
and then it began to waterfall.
Her secret words had been heard, the clouds gathered to listen in.
We watched and welcomed this change of skies and days,
hearts and pace, pools of passing light and piles of cotton,
rectangles without edges, these divine Sundays,
spent simply
content in the castle with rain rolling around.
Another week cycles through and she has grown from Princess to Queen.
After all these loads I have carried, I  dutifully reflect the greys I've gathered,
the sun shifts and she thunders through
her bedroom, the walls tremble.
Busy casting rainbows by skipping stones,
she practices powers with her crystal eyes,
rocks, refracting pain into pleasure
from her chest full of gold

knowing she now controls the weather.








Painting by Xavier Mellery, 'The Artists Daughter' c. 1882 in the Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Selfie-synthesis

Inevitably, they will wonder how we did it
Survived, in a time like this with the stakes so high
and dwelling so low.
None get out alive anyway.
And perhaps these distractions they will think
occupied us, and we were not really living but playing a part
and pretending living and dying went on as usual
but somehow more incredible or ordinary
since we wore out wonder and shocked ourselves
callous and invincible in some ways temporary and just
passing through. None lived, they only carried on.
#iwashere

Since they will be searching and researching for reasons,
answers, motives, fatalities and appendices, it will be concluded
that there was an absence of unity, a zero, and no symmetry or sense
of All or order like will. It was exposure
of holes, leaks, sparks, rust, unraveling, sputtering and still many
looked away but felt the erosion on their tongue.
It was the wearing and tearing of natural light.
This presumption would be right
for the few who went outside the blue boxes
to capture and view larger than a life.
It became too much to write.

#i-magi-nation






Artwork By Herbert G SCHMALZ (1856 - 1935) (Britain) 'Zenobia's last look on Palmyra' (1888) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The beaten path

The road is much traveled
and many speculations remain
about the roads not taken.

We have all come upon ourselves
confused, at the apex of options-
(a) or (to) be decisive upon catching the
flicker of a tall Indian paintbrush leaning
like an arrow as a sign to be read,
This Way-a choice is made for us.

We were exploring the Sierra ranges
and wound our way wordlessly
worshiping the execution of a task as
simple as footfalls when sinking into
shade, the unmistakable turbine of water
argued with the rocks somewhere nearby.

And as if made of honey,
we were drawn to the source.
Two humans length
off the path and we became
the main course. Each of us
quickly encased in a thick cloud
of blood-sucking bugs.

We persisted
and swatted and swung
at each other. For why we knew not.
We had seen running water before,
as rivers lead to other rivers before
spilling onto
the same old sandy shores.

Well, we nearly made it.
When the bough broke
the snap of our attention,
like a fishing line, hooked our cheek
on a fallen boulder of brown, a mound
facing its reflection as though right
at home.

The brown bear beat us there.




Painting by Albert Bierstadt, 'Passing storm over the Sierra's' c. 1870 in [Public domain].

Co-habit

Coyotes call out
as my alarm
under the mourning doves
coo who
take shelter and shade themselves
for the sunrise says something
predictably ominous and
October or somber.

Today, together, we all rise,
pecking or rooting our way
to live through the next
far-off sounds
Encased in lives that spin
bodies that stir
the world around
in space and time.

The shadows these worlds cast
are not solid bodies and growth
gives off chemical cues
that like evaporation,
dew always dissipates
into tomorrow,
there and gone,
a scent of something passed.




Photo credit: National Park Service from USA, taken 8/2017 [Public domain].

Imagery

Caught the words like snow
flakes-
Atop a calm pond net-
swallowing crystals.

I see life is almost
like a train ride as we sit
we fixate on this blurred view
and it passes too fast to focus
on a thing or know
how far we have traveled.

This season blurs
the windows
of time
when all changes
feel the same
as the last time.



Painting by Imre Ámos, c. 1939 in [Public domain].