Blood Relation
I’m a brake bleeder
A there-when-you-need-her girl
Mechanic’s daughter
Barred owl calls before sunset,
who cooks for you, who?
Mockingbird sings into the night,
operatic medley of bird songs.
Who cooks for you, who?
Dad taught me that,
and the operatic medley of bird songs.
Mom taught me how to feed a crowd.
Dad taught me that
the world opens itself to open eyes.
Mom taught me how to feed a crowd,
how to improvise and make do.
The world opens itself to open eyes.
Tonight I saw my first firefly.
I’ve learned how to improvise and make do,
even when summer starts cold and wet.
Tonight I saw my first firefly.
Barred owl called before sunset.
Even when summer starts cold and wet,
Mockingbird sings into the dark.
The first time I saw the ocean
It was such a marvel to me!
I had spent my life land-locked
Tucked deep in the foothills
Of my beloved Appalachians
I had never seen anything so
Vast and sparkling, like tiny
Diamonds strewn out across
A blue blanket; ebbing and
Flowing as the tides rolled
The sand was hot to touch
The air briney with salt and
I, just standing there, taking
It
All
In
the whole ocean is disturbed based on the ripples I observe;
and I see you’ve never felt more alive being pulled within the tide
the emotions the depths couldn’t hide
as the top layer won’t subside
the tip of the Big Dipper drips down on us
and we collide with the waters and the sky,
us and our surroundings unify and we feel slightly more spry as we ask if our existence is lie
and if it was we just wouldn’t care because life is short and a present presence rare
so we choose to not be hesitant and aware
and in the vastness of the universe, we found our place
but your departure left me lost and feeling erased
your love a trip to infinity, leaving me scattered
we looked at the stars, I felt small, but we mattered..
She is exhausted all the time,
and every minute of nursing and burping,
another minute of freedom she never knew
— Gone.
Like smoke that rises from the coals
and fills every inch, every ion,
clothing every molecule of oxygen in its cloak
until breathing is impossible.
She was chosen, this mother-child,
She chose, this child-mother.
Breathing deep in the face of God,
she was free to decide
although it had already been decided.
That single moment loops in time
like yarn endlessly knit over and through.
Time skips like a record,
popping and scratching
— Say yes. Say yes.
She gives all of herself in gulping mouthfuls.
How the child suckles, her child,
born to be given up one day
without a place deep enough to grieve,
without a stone to lie flowers.
And that single moment skips like a record,
popping and scratching
— Say yes. Say yes.
The ache,
Seeping through marrow cracks,
Like the cold from a blue norther.
The shadow of wholeness left behind, reflected in pictures of messages that sustain me without your sun.
Faith in the plan,
some days fragile, threatening to topple with moth-winged-winds but no more blind than the moon crescent winking at Venus.
Tonight, sleep will bring your face before me
And Gilead ghost-touches on my skin.
I am here.
Waiting.
