Reading Your FaceHow I saw my face when I saw your face,
in the faces of mamas and papas, in the faces of the ballerinas covered and hidden to conceal all grace. How I felt the burden of the sashweights & bags of birdshot, & all the wincing & the loud noise, & the thoughts shattering, & the radio sealing all our fates. I, too, feel as if I’m suspended in air for a moment kissing my love. |
CocoonFor Margaret A butterfly breaks from a cocoon with wings fully grown, ready to set flight. Hanging from a wet tree branch, a raindrop falls and absorbs into the damp soil. A caterpillar crawls, expands head. It slinks slowly to the base of tree looking up toward the cocoon now open. As more rain falls, the cocoon falls also. The butterfly's wings flutter through the air with flapping with fanning with full fashion of color. Blurring busily through the soaking foliage, wings struck by the light, it lands on the petal, legs finding soft traction, it rests on the matching petal. |
Fireweed Winking Here at the Yukla Yurt on the river
bends, where raging rapids run rapidly, red raspberries await a fresh picking and silence blows through spruce leaves. A whisper in the woods, down the path to Echo Bend, where water calms and mountains stretch upward, where for miles the sweet song of a songbird flies after the swift foot heels of the wind, a step of roots leads to a step of rocks, surrounded by lichen patches, and moss near craggy cliffs, and fireweed winking into the depths of the forest, seeing sunlight breaking in between countless trees, and shadows underneath birch bark peeling. |