a prophecy, a spell, a dare,
heavy with the weight of beauty,
often those chosen when composing poetry,
not exactly right, not exactly able to cite, but in my palm, starlight
uncloaks night
so that someone may read it, and for a second, find
around us, above us, below us
crimson marrow: sweet, plump, fragrant salve.

Here’s an exercise in imagination:
Who will soften the harsh rain?
The splash reaches the tip of my tongue,
some mossy crawling through the hollows.
I hover too, savor the fleeting
roars in forked tongues that lick the sky.
But hidden among un-
fallen fruit, I want the sun-
flowers as far as the eye can see into the horizon.

Later in another country,
you must share every note you wrote with one
barred owl, called before sunset.
(Or an echo of what you’ve wished
after there are no more blue things and simply silence).
Give me this one little thing.
My attention isn’t long enough;
I persist in echoes.

A Cento with lines by Jessica Stump, Pat Owen, Mary Allen, Sawyer Mustopoh, Pam Campbell, Shaun Turner, Libby Falk Jones, Karen George, Mike Wilson, Dilly, Tom C. Hunley, Sylvia Ahrens, Nancy Jentsch, Alissa Sammarco, Melva Sue Priddy, Kevin Nance, Catherine Perkins, Elizabeth Beck,  Ellen Austin-Li, Gwyneth Stewart, Goldie, Greg Friedman, Misty Skaggs, Victoria Woolf Bailey and Maira Faisal