Spread out these time creased wings
Reach for the sun beyond
The height where others fell
Excerpt From The Exquisite Rapture of St Joan
The Puritan
Her girlhood game of spinning to fall tilted onto fresh cut grass
in snail-paced ancient wonder. This was the miracle
how gravity could hold her. A force grounded counter-
balanced. The perceived stillness of a flying planet
across the arc of time she emptied her calendar
found herself lost her mind. No plan came true
through years of shelter greed justice
crime only a world giving birth to night and day
draw death from life between her suburban church
to the shattered earth her hymnal hit the floor in ordinary time
Ophelia
What if time really were a river?
The Nile, maybe the Amazon and the Mississippi too
All three tied together tail to mouth
Mouth to tail around our lonesome globe
We could travel waves of cherished books
Always another page left to turn
The horizon tuned to play our favorite song
Without a final phrase
The Morning of Her Passing
I cried with a banshee wind released
to run through elder trees
stripped bare by northern songs
the brown oak leaves
down bitter breeze blown
through footprint caves in snow
the girl I was touched fire
once, to wish on ghosts of flame
this frost burns the same
covet with the wind my limbs
frozen extend to grip the pallid sky
yet the geese migrate they fly
while life is lifted I’m left behind
to watch the wild winged escape
on the breath she took to die
Anchor and Arrow
I dropped anchor on other quests
that first night of lightest emptiness
Warmest skin pressed to find
repurposed breast. The smell
of newest newborn breath. A person
formed both young and old
timeless brightest growing child
Mine to hold. Yours to give
Blissful the arc of the arrow
when Fate pulled the quiver of my bow
Stained
her pulse turns wine into music notes
a bitter sip for a starved soul
she opens her hand to write the next line
in the novel of her calloused palm
one more time. One more loop
in the mandala
Flame
She walked through the fire
Nothing left but her soul
Open your fingers
Spread your palm
And blow
When She’s Gone
Listen
you will hear her story
awake on a breath of wind
the wings of a butterfly
in that first unfolding
whisper the colors of her dress
a prism of light through your window
The Artist
The hungry mystery. The She. The I Am
woman
mother
artist
Creation’s fertile ground
Do you have room for one more artist?
Give her a home
Your Seaside Souvenir
A woman, she’s an ocean and
the ocean has her moods too
Today, she started stretched out smooth
above a bed of predatory prey. The constant hidden
hunger under sheets soon tossed to billowed waves
Find Your Story 