Category: Art
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Worth staying for
Dusts of snow edge the earth, uneven lines mark sun-warmed pavers. With under-parts protected, statuary gather new relief, dying grasses open in broad pompons, perennial stalks crisscross into heavy mounds of gold, pine tufts reach out in a first, mourning grace. All else hushes, runs for cover, but our small, neglected garden unfolds, yawns wide…
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So cold the sky
waves roll in, tossed over themselves by November winds that scrape surface up and over, up and over, coil under clouds, moan through cedars, find me here, damp, burying the roots of this sapling today as if in a ceremony of dark days, bewitched by the sky long turned cold and forceful, my magic increases…
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Space
how it is our first and final loss how it is always here and not here how the way I dress for work preserves it, letting the things of girlhood fall away how you forgot why you were excited to get up by the time you poured your coffee how you ambled back into the…
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When digging in my garden
Open spade cleaves mud, unwraps under-earth’s treasure-trove — twisted wires of plant roots clinging deep, no repentance, no shame. I ask when will you break free, leave us alone, untangle this mess? You grip on, silent as black, churning in your own direction, to your own end, to ours.
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From the ether
Late in the afternoon that day, as the low sun pierced the leaves like a thousand glimmering stars, each of my long-dead patients rushed me towards an unexpected, unearned bliss. Of course, it seems shallow how memories, obscured by our endless tasks, doings of this moment or that, can burst into our presence and bring…
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Be it ever so
The light that morning came through a crack in the ceiling with me squatting over a pool, fed by some endless spring running far under ground, unseen, always present. The water made images of our faces flat with shadows, asked us to pause, fed us with wonder, perplexity, confusion, hope, disconsolation. I rose as always…
Poems from in between 