Kite

Kite

A tatted tail snakes
her length
along a populated lawn,
calculating the odds
It is the first time
for this girl 
to run with the string
Just the same,

everybody knows
she has dragon blood.
It’s too bad
the air is being polite today
maybe in deference to
dizzying crowds
or an imminent squall
She takes the pulses

of the grasses
quivers
to the fragrance
of a thousand flowers
sings her blood
to summer's keel

---the thing is
they are ready
to fly.

Written for One Single Impression, prompt "kite" and Sunday Scribblings, prompt "stretch".

If I stood

If I stood at the edge
with my throat dry
and paltry
as a mackerel

If I stood there
with a bottle
So common
that I had to
run from it

If I stood at the edge
hips wide as a barrow
neck narrow
as a
channel


If I stood
at the whistling edge

Then would I
angle my love
And my anger too
into that brown blown
bottom

Toes curled
making a fluted wish:

That she who
retrieves
this swept hollow bottle
would not
have to start
again.

Written for Real Toad, Message in a Bottle

Serenity Prayer

Today am I tossing
out the rough
draft
of words which weren’t spoken
of memories that would defend
of wild mulberry where I hid

On sheer Thursday
will I shred all
evidence
of a building’s blind pitching
of fingers closely stitched
of book tossed beds where I laid

Count out the times
when I sober tried
to locate you
in the spotless wind
that ruffled
green lapped shingles

Now come I clear
to this place
to remove the stone
How keenly fixed I am
to erase
every last trace
of you.

written for 3 word wednesday: serenity locate, draft

flaw

Daybreak

lonely speck astride

sunstreaked pane, grows hooves then mane

daybreak clattering

written for Haiku Heights, prompt "flaw"

J'Accuse

Strauss-Kahn hyphenate

J'accuse!!! maid's flaws daily inked,

her name: a soiled sheet

written for Haiku Heights, "flaw"

new moon

Her steps grow faint away

New moon

Silent blooms, rest in night’s embrace.

pigeons in winter

Tiny paper cuts

ruffled peony, forest

blooming while we sleep.

When the sky is low

and undecided still

I lift this heart

with its thousand paper cuts,

place it on a weathered sill.

My heart

with its knuckled ridges

and secret ravines

I am feeling glad

about the places

where severed edges meet

and do not close--

With the moonlight pouring through them

my heart becomes

a lantern,

Your words

blow through my hair

nibble at my neck

like pigeons in winter.

This poem was inspired by prompts: One Single Impression "exhibition, Sunday Scribblings "surrender", Carry on Tuesday "After all, tomorrow is another day" and Haiku Heights, "heal".

It begins

It begins

with a quiver

of thought

so thin

the wind

blows through it

the wind

becomes a word

for “thank you”

and so it spreads

like welcome rain.

if you wait,

they will come:

broomsedge to goldenrod,

sweetgum to winged elm

an epidemic of tall trees,

supple, arriving

on the edge of ice.

I have taken lately to following the slightest sliver of impulse to contact a friend. I want to be promiscuous with these impulses. Risking decorum, defying temperament, I make the call. I have to believe these seeds are as opportunistic as any and will take hold in lava fields, on glacial tills, on craggy hillsides. Around the world, lands which have been laid bare by fires or humans follow a similar pattern of recovery. This pattern is referred to as "natural succession."

Written for OSI, prompt, "epidemic".