there’s so much noise in my brain my god today it’s a flamingo revolution and a
scrabbling sound in the gutter or maybe the soffit it’s hard to tell where 
the sound is coming from its nails scraping metal this morning and i tried
tapping the gutter with a broom to locate the source but i must have scared it because 
it went still i don’t know how it’s still 
alive in this heat it’s been scratching and shuffling all day in my head urging me to save it because it’s trapped but i can’t find a way to set it free not even from the attic and i’m desperate for peace and to stop 
feeling like i need to do something all day every day and want to shout 
my god will someone do something! 
i’m a mad Poe narrator on a ladder near the roof peeling back the siding because i’m guilty
of helplessness i want to stop it from dying stop worrying about everything that’s dying stop the disregard for life
stop the noise trying to drown my belief in the value 
of one 
small life

Grandfather Rock

Solid, steady, stoic,

Face stubbled with moss 

Pockmarked with craters 

Almost lunar in scope 

Marbled with seafoam lichen,

He supports many lifeforms,

Like the Rhododendron Maximum

That stands on his shoulders

Grizzled & jutting over the trail

With protective prominence,

Ancient presence, 

From the seafloor of yore,

To the mixed mesophytic forest 

Over which he now

Patiently presides, 

Watching his children, 

Awaiting the next phase 

Of his guardianship.

The thousand stone steps
of Bolsena’s castle
were not a penance or payment
for beauty but an embrace
of the ancient to savor today’s beauty.  

Each incline of limestone fatigue
up or down (does it matter?)
brought breath to press upward.  

The twist of medieval protection
meant learning liberation
where walls were accepted boundaries
for the possibility
to look outward
and inward
together.  

Curious when Dad placed
a pinch of Copenhagen between
his lip and gum

Asked me, “Try some?”
Put the snus in my mouth and advised
“Don’t swallow it”

No sooner spoke those words
than i choked, sending
that sweet moist tobacco down my throat

Promptly turned grasshopper green &
puked on the kitchen floor—
My gawd, never been that sick before

     No more tobacco for me

*I was eight years old at the time

I am hard to contain

Into qualifiers and perspective

My body moves like a gust of wind

Through damp trees

Sunlight bright like orbs

Of magic through leafs

People wish to call me by name

But my passion crashes hard

Like salty ocean waves

And thunder roaring behind mountains

I’ve heard it called containing multitudes

What if it’s simply the idea

That I am part of nature

I’m more large and grand

Than this human vessel

Can hold and carry?

My heart holding far greater

The spirit of all that is above and below me

Far more magnificent than

Adjectives and things dictated upon me

My body grows wild with the lavender

Is fertile from morning rain

Brightest of blue

Dotted with marshmallowy clouds

And on some days I am gray

Or cold covered

Decorated

With glistening iridescent snow

But no matter the day

The feeling or the inspiration

I am great

I wish to know the baptism

Of earth from waterfalls

To play with whimsy

Amongst blades of grass

As tall as me

Never feeling inadequate on the days

I feel like a daisy compared to an oak

Knowing eventually

Happily

I’ll be reduced back

To the dirt from where I came

Not Town Branch, Cane Run, Eagle, Scott, or Elkhorn;

not tulip poplar, redbud, dogwood, pawpaw, sycamore, river birch, hackberry, black walnut, honey locust, red cedar, sweetbay, or sweetgum could quench the fire that consumes my heart as much as a lovely spring that sometimes weeps with me, and the sturdy young tree whom in my verse I praise and mourn.

In these I find some protection against the onslaught of Love, through which I must pass my days as if armored, while life rushes on with astonishing speed.

So let the clear creek continue its murmuring course through limestone and switchgrass, and let the bur oak grow wise upon the green lawn;

and may she who planted him sit one day in his mossy shade and, to the sound of the waters, write thoughts both lofty and joyful.

In the robot age we would do well to ask
I have read the ancient manuscripts
That warn of dragons and sea monsters
On the edge of maps
Once the pinnacle of current technology
I know the perils of navigation and do not trust the robots
Even though there are some storied machines I love
Yes, even in these modern times,
We still need the lightkeepers
To warn us off the rocks and shoals
To guide us toward safe harbor
We must protect the lighthouses and their tenders
For the sake of our shared history and their stark beauty in the dark
But also because we do not dare place our entire fates within the grasp of the robots
Or their makers
We know that lighthouses can stand most tests and still catch our eyes on the horizon
While robots do not easily navigate delicate tasks
Like shining a warning light.

an imaginary angle

Fuel:

To preserve the sweet syllabic kisses
of your love before you leave me alone
to dissolve against all this gruesome war,
I will have to seize the same unholy ways
of being a righteous fool. The flames of
discontent are a tender wilderness when
the residue of blue breath escapes from
perilous capture. Oh how many nights,
voices, books, years will be obscured by
the shifting heels of an unforgiving violet?
And what matters most in the Winter rain,
except for the silence?  Is it the sunshine
or bleached sky of a mourning language?
Or the swells of the buttered damage?
What keeps me kissing your darling lips?
Oh, how I rejoice with the waltzing wound
that frames my entire daring existence.

©️Winter Dawn Burns

The next time I saw her,
Her face was erased,
Features hardly discernable any more
And only with the succor of overdone mascara.  

“Too much concealer,” she explained
Over her customary produce,
Though the spinach was puree
And the strawberries were lesions,
White bearded and leaking.  

Her physician, it so happened
Was a 19th Century medicine man
In disguise, his covered wagon
Stashed away behind the new
Postmodern medical complex.
He had cures for migraines hangnails
Papercuts laugh lines boredom
A spouse’s wandering eyes—  

I never know where people go
Once they step through
The automatic glass doors.
Open and shut open and shut,
Watch them long enough and they become
Maws gnawing bodies whole,
Nothing but the city’s dark
Gaping gullet beyond.  

Her voice strained, squeaked.
Her mouth sunk back into the blur,
eyes, nose, ears, hair, all smudged
like ink from a bleeding
Pen. She pulled out her lipstick, drew
Lips where the lips should be,
A bit too puffy, perhaps, as though
injected with novocaine.  

Syllables strained through
The inflated lips, “I’m addicted,
I’ve lost myself.” And, with that,
She drifted from my register, beyond
My humble realm of influence,
Into a night that never spat her out
Again.