The Backwood

Pale dusty pathways
rimmed in pin oak and white pine,
Brawny red maples,
Old oaks and cream magnolias,
soft white birch shedding
sweet marbled skin.
Lined leaves,
ribbon sunshine
a liquid luminescence
pours purple checked valleys,
floods wild reed,
silent pools,
sparkling showers and blinking scintilla.
Slanting pillars of celestial light
where black flies and star bugs
flicker as dust

Felicitous ferns bent in prayer
Chiming, singing,
whispering Ashram.
Arc of noble dens,
humble stones,
pew boughs.
A world more forgiving than the rest

A place to breathe,
to sleep and to wake,
to begin and to end
To listen closely for the wild geese coming home

False Layout of Hell

Oral presentations are, by far, the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I sit in front of sets of eyes, lips pursed into bored frowns, folded arms. Lights pour down from the ceiling, and I imagine that every flaw of my pale face is highlighted and shadowed like an old map. Three pages of carefully typed, thoroughly contrived, lengthy notes suddenly look as if the rain has found them. I'll read a word here. A word there. Skip over the main points. Lose my place. Forget what I'm talking about. I'm numb but aware of the regret simmering in the back of my mind, ready to sprout like a weed once I've found a clear moment to think. Emily becomes a stranger, someone I thought I'd left behind between those yellow walls of middle school. I'm twelve years old again, uniformed, blinking behind large, round, metal-rimmed glasses, afraid of what's going to happen next.

I tell myself I'll sink into the softness of this negative approach to silence, let it wrap me up the way spiders tie up flies. But that's absurd, a cruel trick of the light. It's a conclusion casting out everything else that matters, like love, the steady movement of walking down an isle smelling of books, embraces, watching waves roll in, or clouds. Earlier today a plane crashed into some one's home. People died. One man said that all of a sudden, there was a huge bang... and the whole sky lit up orange. Imagine all those tears.

Life's about clinging to what we have, scooping up more, and spreading the good seeds over everything else. It's about that first brilliant day of sun, and the snow melting off rooftops and tree branches. When someone looks at me, holds onto me with their eyes, I realize that we're both still here, still drenched in life. It's in silence that I find these things. Why should I let it go?

gem

It's the perfect day for a walk.

The early sky, a watery mix of yellow and blue, tastes like spring.

Already my tongue savors pastel-coated chocolates, soft bright fruit, iced tea.

My feet miss wet grass, sand of trails, each other.

I miss warm wind braiding my hair into knots, skin against skin, flesh of emerald leaves.

I move slow, hoping patience will let this day linger.

Tip Over

Teetering, calloused heels barely touching cliff stone,
I tumble from rock into river, the concrete
world grows abstract. Orchids unfurl
into asymmetrical faces, sky drips
into swirling cosmos, stones droop over stilts,
Botticelli's fine lines swept away as dust.

People, splayed stars spinning on oily surface, join hands,
churn sapphire, emerald, charcoal blues, puce, mango, lemon lime
yellow into hypnotizing curls, question marks
braiding into mud.

Fingers to wrist.
Fingers to ankle.
Shapes moving towards End,
coated in the same armour, touching bare skin,
feeling for foreign textures
on river bottom, waiting to sink.

Flip

I can't leave the day alone without giving him a word. Orange or rouge or basking in silver. But lately our conversation's grown foreign, two tongues rambling in language I don't understand. The ones I gave him with my tongue, the auburn and lime green, the blue horizon glinting from his eyes, are slipping into parched air. Droplets suddenly forgotten in what was once dampness. Rain. Liquid that broke them from invisible shells and flung them against skin in lavish colors, bled over dead land. Tickling my ear with his silent teeth, I don't know him. Can't feel his breath. He's only a mirage. A slipping away of something sweet I never tasted but always crave. I know the colors, but some days my favorite one is grey.

Guitar

His thigh pressed
against her round
hip
Calloused fingers
flutter over
thin neck
urge Canon in D
from wide
hungry
belly

We sit
with mugs of
Mate while
outside
the bruised sky
laughs
a wide mouth
splattering stars
Pine boughs droop
under wet of winter
Coyote paws puncture
snow

I watch steam
from red mugs curl
pages inked
in silent symbols
his eyes closed
stretched hands
issue steady march
of copper music

Coyote yells at
yellow moon
pinched between
crooked fingers
of naked trees

The Healing Tree

My jaundiced eyes
boil in
pallid
weeping flesh

My body

drawn
to the spotted tree

Naked knees
wet palms
burn in drifts
of bitter ice

I crawl to ring
of brown heat
warm halo of
dry leaves
around roots

My body

against
the dying tree

I hook purple ribs
over weak limbs
feel the dark bark
cover me
grow thick
heavy
spill blood
and drink

I too
taste sap

This oak and I
grow strong
again

Following the Botanist Through Cemeteries

In a place where the dead lay
life blossoms
and we spend our days strolling
through this land in search
of orchids

Bernhardt traces flower history
scrawling from northern Australia's
orchids winding
around thick trees
down to the southern tip
where they flourish
in thin soil.
He notes helmet-shaped heads,
sac tuberoids, curled purple
sepals, and slender stems
shooting from untouched earth

I walk behind him
lapping up the Diuris corymbosa,
acianthus, chiloglottism, caudatus
and lilac spilling
from a mouth.
The words, too, roll
from my tongue as I swat away
bees and wasps with pollen-
coagulated fur,
noting how some orchids
spring from shadow

His hand cups
a pale blue head, stem, like liquid,
streaming through fingers.
I give words to the frosty impression
left after Bernhardt's heel tilts
as he kneels to breathe in
the flower's pollen

Light comes washing over us
with nectar on our lips,
orchid roots cracking free
from smooth seeds