Iris Blooms

I’m told she had green eyes, but I can’t tell

by the face forever frozen in black and white.

 

I tried to take a step beyond the glass once,

but the frame held me in place, making faces.

 

Eyes hover over broken surfaces like mirrors,

but what is a soul when it’s set on the mantelpiece?

 

Her lips never move, though I’m sure they spoke

as often as my own, but her eyes follow me.

 

Springtime. The frame is grass and irises and the

glass is far enough to ignore, but for bent sunlight.

 

I take the photo into the air that breathes itself.

Look me in the eyes if you want to see in color.

Stepping into a Lightless Basement

And the headaches get worse,

like the shock of alcohol to the mind –

a wisp of thought draining the dregs of

poison and remedy,

            remedy and poison.

 

The mind is slipping, so society puts it.

Words like leaves only lasting a season,

and I remember the sound of autumn;

dry things like leaves, twigs and

forsaken liquor bottles,

            forsaken glass.

 

Funny how our eyes search the darkness

for that which it will only see in the light.

Mwen Remnen Ou

On the other side of the glass is a desert.

We press our face to the window, aching,

dying to dance with the sand in the wind.

And hold the half-sized hands

scarred by thorns and God knows what else;

Squeeze them once more.

We wish.

 

An earthquake shakes our insides and the glass breaks.

Stained glass children step out to see

blanc faces; we clasp and swing

in a dizzying dance, muddying the shades of our skin,

skipping and finally releasing

tearful shrieks of laughter, teeth clenched.

Lost in a confusion of twisted limbs,

the very sinews of our selves entangle

with those of children who will be gone next year.

 

Refuse and sweat boiling in tropic heat

couldn’t be sweeter, we think.

 

Two years pass and even yet the sand clings to our boots,

dancing and singing, just as before.

Only, some days, it’s still as glass.

Walk in the Morning Rain

An archer steps still to the edge of the ferns;

arrowheads barely piercing the mist.

It is a silent moment when a heart stops beating.

Ferns dip their head in quiet assent, while

the mist falls disinterestedly on.

 

We retrace the archer’s steps as the days pass.

We run our fingers along the papery bark

of the evergreens, remembering.

 

Songless sparrows look on as we plunge

our hands into the wet soil where she last lay,

hoping to feel her last heartbeat.

Hoping to hear the last melody of our

Godforsaken siren.

And still the ferns creep closer to her grave.

A Year of Mornings

Sheets blue and lined by the impressions of raindrops on the window, hardly thick enough to keep out the cold. My skin tingles at the touch of the fabric and warm words whispered by a fleshless voice. Eyes open slowly, faintly; vision touching the walls illuminated by a sun grinning through clouds and rain. I could laugh at the stillness of the air here, behind the windows, when outside the wintry branches wave naked fists in the wind.

The pads of my feet aren’t calloused enough to ignore the spring of grass leaping into the sun. I bury my toes in the sponge of soil, tapping my fingers to the percussion of snapping roots. Looking up, I can’t help but to laugh with the chorus of new growth. Thick air born of bark and budding branches caresses me in a wordless expression of rejoicing and being.

I can trace the lines left behind the lights in the towns below me as they go out. A light here, to the east, goes out just as the hum of electricity bursts in a home, miles west of it – both homes lit by the same lines. Children laugh as fathers tell stories and believe that all is well. I lie in the grass beneath gathering clouds and let my clothes soak up last night’s rain, wondering when the voiceless whisper will speak again.