The Water Dove

 

I kissed the dove

who made her nest

in the lonely pool at the bottom of my heart.

Little water-dove

sweet creature, feathered mother,

when I breathe, you flutter, shift, and sigh.

I kissed the foxes

whose meal was lately

in the henhouse where all rain is born.

Little hidden ones

with your silent black feet,

when I cry, you peer out from moonlit memory.

I kissed the gamesman

in the old pink cottage

because he was there, and silent, like God.

I was the little nanny

in the graveyard singing

to the doves, and foxes, and gamesman

peering back at me from the lonely pool 

of moonlit memory.

________

for Word Garden Word List--Life After Life. 

Music: Rodrigo Adagio 

Bareback Rider

 

When I was a girl, I often dreamed

that I rode a haunted horse whose head was ether

and its steady breath was my own pulse

sounding through my ear pressed hard upon the pillow.

We rode in slow procession through 

the house gone unfamiliar in weird shadows

pulling a death-carriage behind us

and it seemed that I labored while the horse hovered

With lantern lights for eyes

on each side in concert with the slant moon

dim-blind through silver windows

but watching as the horse's flanks rose and fell.

A bareback rider, I hooked fingers

through streamers of jet mane like widow's weeds in a breeze,

hoping to hang on, to wake up

only to see Thanatos the ostler smiling and standing

At the stable door holding a gleaming dark apple for his charge.

_________

For Sunday Muse #236.

Music: Snakefarm "All The Pretty Little Horses"

Watercolor

 Last night I remembered you into being

like rose-colored paint swirling in a water glass 

from brushes dipped in street scenes and night windows.

Remember, black-eyed susans sleeping by the step,

remember, rain caught on the upturned leaves of silver maples,

recall, to no point really, the dusty lanterns on the lawn.

Last night my fingertips wandered along the lines of this poem,

looking for the place where your body moved like a brushstroke

looking for me, the way I was, the way I loved how you were.

Last night, I remembered you into being

and the moonlight on the wall made me afraid, of time 

and of memory, and of these lines where they meet, like mourners.

___________

 for Sunday Muse #174.