Mary

With silence whispered
Too great for ears with
Red fading from pursed lips and
Skin white and so painfully smooth.
A miracle of cheeks
Of wind and tensed moments
Of hearts and
Still with eyes down cast and
Words forming tears of blood.

Bright Eyes

Lush verdant breathing musky
Soil much more than
Static and filled with
Howling with laughter
Sometimes thought wise
But oh so
Often fools and we
Clinging to ignorance owned
Conditions that cleft difference
Between the laughing, climbing,
And those who would sit and watch.

Carthage

A wooden frame upon a hill
And those few people who pulled together
Beneath a roof with holes thought
Nothing of the wind that robbed their nights
Of blissful dreams.

She looked out eyes wide
Awake with the knowing
The feeling that
Things are not as they should be
As they were intended to be
As she wanted them to be
And she kissed those dreams
And turned.

He wept, wind in his
Hair blown back towards what
Was left behind. Destiny
Not given to kindness
And fate made by poets
Long dead.

Ethyl

Water, as from always
Her sky, and is
Mine. Hope should be
Hope, more to friend,
Much more, than like
And word, smoke, fire,
And she, broken water.

Frost

When I was too young to really understand irony, a year came
The frost came far earlier than we had expected and on
Our little hobby farm a great machine of people
Was put to action to save those who
May not make it through a frozen night
When their shelters and were not yet complete.

My two adopted sisters, my half-brother and
I, with the help of our mother and stepfather ran,
Feet crushing the thickening earth,
Breath hanging in the air,
Gathering one and all the creatures of our youth,
Our barnyard hosts who gave
And took and did not think anything of it.

Into feed sheds, blankets wrapped around
Bodies of fur and caked with mud
They were put into barns in
Makeshift families for their
Mutual safety
Bleating and mooing
Without understanding for why such a things were done
Or why this was their life
And we shut them in to work it out themselves
Falling asleep exhausted in the warmth of our beds.

Starlight

Her lips words breathless searching
More than I can remember a time
Young pure innocent searching to
Know again
Never this moment again
Cheeks flushed night air and my eyes hungry her
Eyes again
Never having drank too long
Not long enough to know if what was there is
There again
For
Me again
Push continues unheard
Breath pulled tight skin wet
Hair grasping but
Hungry again
Eyes again
And there cannot
Cannot know cannot believe cannot
Touch again
Eyes again
Pulling
Away again