Yay/neigh

If wishes
were
horses
they would be the bay kind,
brown and drab with black manes
and they would lazy around your field, chewing your grasses and snorting at flies,
whinnying,
"my kingdom for a wish"
on occasion,
and then they would
go back
to
the grass.
This thing is
alive,
I would think,
mounting its back
which rippled with
muscles and
swayed under me,
no machine,
it has
thoughts
and
it can feel me here
it can
knock me
off.
Noticing this
throws me
off

Define:sedimentary

At some point, I must be
the rock
onto which
you lower yourself
but
At some point, I must
not be
that rock
anymore

Hands

You are like clockwork.

1Your one hand is shorter than your other

2and I do not know how to wind you up

3you chime on the hour

4you are made up of gears

5you have a pendulum that swings back and forth and

6you are watch-size

7or a grandfather

8you have a small bird inside of you that springs out of a little trap door occasionally

9and you are analog instead of digital

10and are esoteric

11and I have to wind you up

12did I mention that I do not know how to do that

That's not what I meant.

Cradle Song

My lullaby is the emptiness
the way that there is no one between the floor and the ceiling
the dart throw of solitude

a raspy voice that whispers
"you are alone"
to the quiet

the hand that is not around my waist
the lips that do not kiss me awake in the mornings

a locked door
two
three
locked doors

a twin bed with dirty sheets

eyes that say
it is the evening
you best be going
now

Silverjaw Minnow

Each time, it gets harder

In the evening half-light
filtered through trees and across distance and
red-green,

I wonder how you see me
sometimes I think that it is tall and beautiful and unattainable
and at other times I think that it is silly and childish and clumsy

I spent the day in the water, walking far out toward Long Island, past the waders and swimmers in bikinis with long hair, out to where the boats were and the seaweed was tall and the sand was silky and the water was cold

and I dug deep in the sand, to where there were fish eggs and shells and translucent rocks, and there was a child beside me but we did not speak, because we were both building, piling the sand and mosaicing it with the rocks we had found, digging moats for the minnows and crabs and repairing the toddler-damage to our fortified walls.

I wonder how you see me, because sometimes I am the girl riding the plastic sea-turtle around and around in circles and laughing from deep inside,

but sometimes I am the woman, sitting back, deep in the back of my skull, planning and thinking and analyzing, the very old woman with steady hands and a wrinkled breast that is a pillow for all who are weary, having lived out its reprosexual purposes and been upcycled...

and sometimes I dance in bars.
Sometimes it is in short skirts.

So on nights like this, when the light makes the trees black against its brightness and the sun considers setting,
Those women watch it.
Those women watch it, and they wonder
if you could love one of us at all
and which of us it is

Green Lacewing

There is a metaphor
which
I struggle to think of
like
pulling water
out of
sand
But that isn't the one,
not one at all
There is a pattern
of
seeing and
of longing
with which I
derive my
understanding of
you

What was it like for her, to be next to you for so long, to be sorted amid your creatures, each of her bones counted and catalogued?  What was it like for her to be the subject of your turning, the sight triggering your half-smiles, the slab of rock brushed by your fingertips?  To lay listening to your sleeping breath, exhaling directness and inhaling intention, as the sun set behind your head

there is
a metaphor
with which I
may understand
your turning

Torch Lake Township

If it had never happened

I would share your breath