Writing Retreat
170 Syllables
Today you are rage
Crash, tumble and angry roar
Gray water churning
Torrid and greedy
Pounding with your suck and snarl
Your fierce hungry mouth
All fury and flow
Melting into a broad sky
Vast and violent
You have travelled miles
To break here on this soft beach
Your echo and froth
Seething, a blood tide
As you bite into the shore
Your thump and loud moan
And unrepentant
Power that seems to eclipse
Every other thing
The ebb leaves treasures
Small wet bubbles in the sand
And the bones of things
A perfect star, a
Sigh, a release, the long slow
Exhale of your breath
Rush to me calls the
Wind, her billow and puff whisper
Over the loud roar
But today, for now
I am inside my warm dream
Of words, looking out
Naming It
I am an unserious woman, curating serious things
Sculpting a flash of horns
And mixing swirls of blue with a bright moon
Time melts in the heat of my life
Unencumbered, I doodle
New York as I see it
Soft bubbles in yellow and pink
Light splashing on cold brick walls
Always, al dente
Like an untethered kiss or
An enchanting swim in a tropical tank
Paint me with your eyes closed
Bathed in warm light
Crawling through the grass in the shadow of my home
Blooming hues from the inside out
The shape of color stamped on my face
Blue is a strum of sad music and
The farm boys are rendering flowers
See me standing, hold my hand
I am a collage of words for hungry readers
Waiting for you, my improbable love
Wrapped in gold and flowers
Singing the easy silence of sisters
Muting the panic of in-between.
Fragments
I
Day is breaking, waves are crashing
The smash and shatter of
A thousand shards of shiny blue
Scattering on the beach
And a loud thump and boom
The sky may be falling, but it won’t break
I remind myself
The world tips on its side
But is steeply inclined
Toward ebb and flow
And being whole
II
crashing, smashing, scattering
shards of shiny blue
the world tipping on its side
and then restored
to ebb and flow
and being whole
III
the world tipping on its side
waves crashing, smashing, scattering
shards of shiny blue
IV
the sky may be falling
but it won’t break
V
ebb and flow and being whole
Losing You
We lost you
Long before you left
I remember the day
Your blue eyes closed forever
Although I didn’t know it at the time
They would never again look up
At the stars, or see me
As they had always done
So perfectly
And in the days of in-between
I held your hand
And memorized your gray little face
Now consumed by a gaping mouth,
That looked like yours
But without the
Song or silly laugh
Or saying of my name
Only the scratchy sound of
Your lingering breath
Your body’s parting glance
That is when I understood
There are many losses
Worse than death
And if anything in my life
Reminds me to believe,
It’s that you were spared
From any more of those.
