Water’s Edge
Long blue heron legs
submerged in warm summer lake.
Trembling strength and grace.
Another oppressive morning starts with daily directives:
“Shoes Off!”
“Empty Your Pockets!”
“Raise Your Arms!”
They shuffle through process lines
like prisoners confined and shackled.
The high-pitch beep of metal detectors
warns us to check closely.
Latex-gloved hands frisk,
pat down bodies in search of contraband
while armed officers stand ready.
It’s probably a smuggled vape or lighter.
But we’re not worried if they want to kill themselves —
just each other.
Another oppressive morning in an American school.
I don’t want to talk about wounds—
swollen bugs—spinning waves of pain
and immense sadness nothing can take away,
this traitor world, beloved monster,
always with me wherever I go—
a magenta stain.
There is always something new to see.
Give me the grace
to make an emulsion of beauty and hope
that impels me to paint
the caress of leaves becoming earth,
the purple quadrant of your faraway eyes–
mirrors of rapture—
verdigris, the embrace of time
that flies like a bullet.
I am eagerly awaiting
the subtle sting
of truth contained in the lies
at the border of collapse.
Can you imagine
a blossoming of the invisible,
a linking together
of me as yourself,
an internal lyric
that makes the world tremble?
~ Cento of lines/phrases found in Frida Kahlo’s diary and her letters.
I wait for rain to wet the ground
to edge my yard with bricks
to block the weeds from blooms,
blood root, blue star, toad shade
doll’s eyes, black hay, and blue phlox,
rain to water the plants I want,
not the seeds that love to taunt
my lamb’s cress, tall rue, sweet flag,
blue fox sedge, lady-by-the lake,
love in a puff, bee balm. Then I’ll sit
on a stump in shade of swamp oak,
hear wrens chirp, see moths dart,
watch leaves dance in a green world.
But now the ground is hard to spade,
the quest far off, the bricks not laid,
the path to edge lush with weeds
who seize the light and strew their seeds.
We humans are endlessly clinging and grasping
The dogwood blossom petals
float freely in the fountain
Mankind ever tormented by the past
and its angst towards an uncertain future
The horses are surrendering their winter coats to the birds
as their nests await the young
Is it not time for a self-liberating act
Let us pull the thorns from our eyes
And take a cool drink
from the wellspring that has never known thirst
Cold June rain
Gracefully falls
From gray clouds
Above
Alone I sit
By window
Rain drops splash
Below
Thoughts of you,
Slowly fill
Mind, heart, soul
Within
But I digress
So there’s this guy sitting on a concrete cylinder
About 3 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter
in the convenience store parking lot
Why it’s there I have no idea
I don’t think the dumpster needs that much protection
But I digress
So the guy is sitting there, smoking a 53 cent cigar
Drinking a pop
Younger than I, naturally ripped
Wearing shorts
I don’t remember what he looked like
I couldn’t pick him out of a line-up
He was covered with skinart
Barbed wire, crosses and celtic runes,
Burning skulls and leaves of weed
Snakes and snake-eyed dice
An 8-Ball
The Jack of Diamonds, the Queen of Hearts and the Ace of Spades
Calligraphy in fourteen fonts and three languages
Faces of children
A naked lady
You think I’m digressing now but
He says “Got any spare change?”
And I reply
“No, but I’ll give you fifty bucks for that tattoo”
The day I married your father
I took you with me to the makeup artist,
remember? You and your friend
both sat in the back seat and you wore
the sunglasses I bought you the whole day,
though the sky was the same dull white
as week-old snow, taking them off only when
your dad insisted since, miracle of miracles
and despite your braces, you’d agreed to sing
the “minutes” song from Rent, the one it took
five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred
renderings of at least, for you to ever tire of.
That year you measured in weddings,
your father’s, your mother’s.
I measured the weeks
with you in Tuesdays, Thursdays,
alternate weekends, Chipotle, pad thai, trips
to the mall for endless Pink (never the color)
and Forever21 until you were
too old. What was I thinking,
all that makeup? Thank you
for saying I looked pretty, that day.
It must have been the sunglasses.
