“Why? Because it’s only natural and
all that natural left. The wind has
no color; it’s clear and soft as jelly
beneath my beating wings…”

“…I don’t know what a cut lily is but I’m
learning. I don’t like to think of bones
bursting out hospital windows but I
do. I don’t like not liking things but
my edges will bleed out and dry…”

“…Luck requires sacredness
(which requires a nicer word, sacracy).
I’ve learned you must ask a butterfly
to beat the clouds away
and nod to the crows when you see them…”

“…ready to take. Give me blueberries
while you tell me we could
never work; give me your
mouth and prove it.”

“…raindrops after rain
have coalesced on the windchimes,
the fence, the hummingbird feeder,
like soft icicles on trees
in crystalline waiting,
like a thousand swords of Damocles…”

“…I’d lay on my back without hesitation,
skin cracking like hardened mud,
gratefully drinking drops from gray clouds.
I wouldn’t look where I was going -
close my eyes, flood, savor the flow…”

“…I notice myself breathing out
for squeezed juice stirred with sugar
in a yellow pitcher, with a wooden spoon.
I notice myself breathing in
I’ve waited so long for this harvest and
am reminded of the power in waiting…”

“…If ever there were peace,
it was a quiet, soft, clear afternoon
on the shore of a teal lake.
But you ruin it when you tell me
I’m building a fairy home.
I bite my tongue and swallow my secrets…”

“…now, instead of
driving
and heat,
you talk of bridges at dawn…”

“…just how flammable they are.
We remember the ash, and the
video camera crackling branches
as horses were freed from the ranch…”

“my visions take place on a mattress
overflowing a frame, low to the ground
where the quiet sounds of us
pour onto the floor and
spill outward the walls
lapping against dark, dirty hardwood…”

“I’ll burn sage for the second time,
think about my vices, maybe
cry, maybe pray, and decide
what I pray to. For now,
I create space in the backyard
to drink strong green tea…”

“…But the feeling of nostalgia
in ground nutmeg,
and the vision of you
against flames flickering
in red glass jars…”

“…keep my own secret garden, to not
cross that line. Makes it all
the more sweet and honeydew
to catch him watch me walk away…”

“…Pink carnations
sing “be soft with yourself”
as recollections build
while you live in a home
with someone who isn’t
as nice as you hoped…”

…”but an ancient philosopher said that
if you think of something, then it exists on some level
so I drove my car through the same old streets,
irrevocably changed and closer to you…”

“…Red wine and succulents,
impish thoughts, petulant,
a hot and wistful temperament –
my mind falls skyward
to you…”

“…You read online
after hours of aimless
staring at web pages
that Jupiter is the
closest it’s been in
fifty-nine years…”

“…I should like to lay you
in a field of tall,
wild grass,
breathing in the breeze,
hook myself to you…”

“…Dream of me like Montana bluegrass,
subtle and attuned to the
breeze around me.
I’ll dream of you like a
westbound train pouring over its tracks…”

“…The stars couldn’t long betray that
you and I have a little of the same dust within us.
Your eyes aren’t bloodshot, but blue,
and your hair would be perfect with my fingers in it…”

“…corn fields somewhere I’ve never seen,
small triumphs I’ve never dreamed
and just a few more stars in the dark.
We read, we write,
we drop our pens and paper…”

“Vision two:
The day I thought I’d leave this house for good
I saw an orange-crowned warbler
and two dark-eyed juncos
flitting in the underbrush out back…”

“…By rusty springs I’ll see your face. and it’s anxiety hoping I still understand your expressions while seeing them less, instead of in all the mornings and corners as usual…”

“…Yet this dried oregano in its plastic jar, probably
plastic we don’t use anymore, probably leeching,
probably plastic oregano in its plastic glossy
red cap, it just sits and sits and I never, ever
grab it except to rummage for anything else…”

“…I shall live in a house with a lemon tree
and when I’m feeling lemony,
I’ll take a fruit from my lemon tree
and sip my freshly lemoned tea…”

“Instead, I’m feverishly dreaming
of breaking sticks to feed to cows,
skinny-dipping on summer days,
what I think your face looked like
when you were surprised…”

“…where the water melds
with the land,
flesh with each other,
shimmering and wet…”

“I got home and
frantically flipped through
seed catalogs,
desperate to find
you in nature…”

“Kiss me atop a golden hill
with lips hot as coffee
and delicate as
early-june daisies…”

“…about your secret life
when I’m not looking at you.
What leaves did you wear in the garden?
Where else do you bloom but for me?

“I learned from my mama you can wash off, dry a cinnamon stick; let it be and it will roll back up.
And maybe I’m the same? I unfurl, I give my gifts;
I’m used and I look it. But wash me off, let me
dry and watch my walls recurl. I reform, I reclaim…”

“….who knew the halfway point between a
wishing-for-autumn persimmon and a
relishing-the-spring lavender is a soft and
neon peach, like the wink and nod of
saying stonefruit when you’re older…”

“…Too messy, too thing, I gleaned it as
the iridescent wing. of some
distant butterfly’s flap. I
felt the ego death of curiosity…”