Your gaze before me, as pleasant as sparkles on the sea, I dig for the gem you carelessly dropped, the muddy ocean seeping under each paw.
Seaside
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Category Archives: Poems
Anchor
The anchor tugs the bottom of my heart — a heart bobbing on the waves — trucks it on a steady journey to the bottom of the sea, to its own country with new life. Upon touching ground, a phosphorescent chain-reaction alights the ocean floor.
Agape
Heavy drops fall and wet the grass and bark. Leaves stir; darkness gathers into a grumble. My stomach churns. I, so young, gaze though the window in earnest anticipation, witness spasms of light and crashes of thunder. My organs quake with each strike. How could I and this vast tumult — am I part of nature? Is this my true mother calling me, claiming me, seeking me out? Strange rending, I confess I am you.
Dred
I took this journey for love, not death. Each night, Captain reminds me, could be my last. Each day, I'm blessed with light, wind, and salt. Strange, my being taught to command men. My duties I fulfill, thankful for my life.
If love were a wound, it would be a flower
Petals cry as the sunlight, so long gone, returns, oblivious to small sadness. Life pulps through cold limbs; corpuscles burn. The flower opens its eyes and takes in the sky and the fire. Red petals soak up the blues as they stretch in ecstasy and throb till they spy sunset. The joy that laughed with the sun whispers to the stars.
Tucked In Nonesuch
I’m tucked away in a small cabin ’mid your vast forest and float upon your world of love, breathing in and out your atmosphere, the stars twinkling ’neath your sun.
Splotch
For you: fine lines. I press with care; the ink bleeds.
If Umbrellas Could Talk
I wear a white dress with a pink ribbon in the hem. I hold my white parasol, sit, and exchange glances with your sharp eyes. You lean in and my lashes fall. A red-hot poker melts a fat candle without touching it and the exposed wick ignites. You just want to play around. My strings lie loose on my chest. Fiddle with them. Wind them taut to a perfect pitch. Play till they sing. Wind, wind, wind till they snap. Break them. All along I just wanted you to break them: just break them well.
Tender
Gazing at iridescent coals we remember at leisure the wet logs we used then jettisoned, the dry ones we trucked too many of, the rolled magazines the fire choked on, the lighter fluid the flames absorbed as quick as we poured, the ineffectual pop of the lighter sacrificed to the pile. When we placed leaf next to leaf, stick over leaves, stick next to stick, log over sticks, log next to log, tending over logs, we had s’mores for a time, tending fire.
Precipitation
After dropping you off,
I find myself in a friendly gaze
with God
or The Great Mother.
I smile for a blissful moment,
returning occasionally,
humbler each time.
It shifts a twinge
down right,
down left,
journeying its way
down
the hidden pathways
in the glass
it clings to.