I sent you off like dandelion wings to float upon the wind. My breath had liberated these feelings, lovely, delicate and kind. But now I hold in saddened hands a stem, topped by a sieve, which gives a strained remembrance of multi-petaled, butter-golden spread, once sweet and deep, turned rancid-sharp and dead. A flower must give way to seed-- which leaves. And so I grieve-- yet understand, this shriveled stalk, this fruitful end.
This spring I missed again the day the waking plum raised green hands in prayer-- my mind too occupied with striking items from a relentless to-do-list.
But today I breathed the blooming thistles' sweetness, each lavender head exhaling holy names, entraining my harried heart. And praise erased all thoughts of chores.
Poem published by Sacred Fire Magazine
Featured Poem for Winter 2017
After the Diagnosis
Snowy straitjackets restrain the firs. In front of me, hills and mounds form feet and folded hands, stiff below a pulled-up sheet. I breathe the stinging cold. Silence slows my pulse, shadows fill my tracks.
Still, the old oaks’ fingers point towards the moon, a pale and elevated host. Branch-built arches raise a ghostly abbey, where black-cowled juncos murmur like ancient priest-physicians incantations which incline this body to the surgeon's knife.