The Pines

I made my skin call itself snow,

and wrapped that body around my heart.

There was no sound except the groaning of the pines.

The world has died, I said.

I have died, there is no sound except the pines.

There was still the sun, 91 million miles away,

dribbling through the branches of the groaning pines. 

There was still my skin of snow.

There was still my heart, a stunned bird fallen from the pines.

Hear the song of the snow falling from the pines,

falling on itself, increasing itself

in thrall to its remote Master,

saying, we are small white suns without heat,

bright, blinding.

I made my skin call itself cold,

and wrapped myself around my heart. 

I said, idiot pines, here is peace, here is stillness.

The pines stood groaning, green day and night,

oblivious to the Master's moods, saying glory glory.

All the while, my heart stirred, brown and puny,

whispering itself out as friable desire

for light, for voice, for the pines that sway

in the unseen, unending movement

of the empty, restless sky.

_______

for Sunday Muse #145.

Following the Fathers

 Fathers' throats fill with wind.

Stars bay like lost dogs

defending the edge of the world

from the shriek of memory.

Take my hand.

It is made of Egypt and empty windows.

I build monuments

to sparrows with royal souls.

I am dead, blown to the borders

of everything I am and was.

This little hill of baubles

is yours now to sell or sew into the sleeves of poems.

Mothers, strangers, mute myths of shadow,

leave me in peace at last. 

I follow the fathers with their wind-throats

a girl again, sung to, willing to be fooled for a kiss.

_____

a second poem for Sunday Muse #121.

Aphelion & Perihelion --- A Child's Anthem

I was a wall-walking ballerina 
dancing in an incinerator,
arms out, bending each way,
light as ash but not consumed.

Now I'm heavy as an old oak clock,
creaky as a forgotten stair,
yet somehow, I know the language of birds.

I'm hard to see in bright light
~always was~
but I shine continuously, weightless.
_______

for Friday Flash 55 at VerseEscape.

Photography by Christine Kapuschinsky Johnson.

untitled 55

Sound isn't what you think.
Your boot soles flat on the wooden floor
is how your feet make fools of your ears.

"Forever" is the froth
offered up by every stranger I have loved.
I turn to it like a bloom,
but fissures up my back 
is how time finds the fool in the room.
______

A 55 for Kerry.