from my window
in my hood I seen
coyotes in the street
a strolling, the smaller
one a limping.chatting
close, speaking soft:
a man, proper in boots, jeans,
white shirt, hat
on a horse at a light:
ducks in the rain
that left the yard a pond :
an old horse clomping
leading a boy on a longboard:
eagles, hawks, owls
parakeets wild; jays
harassing cardinals timid
and squirrels brazen:
neighbors driving lawnmowers
In the street
what will the day be,
bring; there’s a plan,
a to-do list unwritten,
spatially conceived,
sketched and plotted
echoes the stillness
calling…later.
sitting in chaos amidst
the Things I thought I
needed, loved, cared
for with attention and
upkeep: time and money
spent to exhaustion
body spent to ruin, mind
butterflied and pinned
behind glass on the wall
There are little red pin-dots circling my ankles
when did they arrive and why?
She was barely 50 when she passed to ether, my older sister who is younger than I. She was the pretty one, the troubled one, too wild for taming or the grind of 9 to 5.
Happy Birthday, sister…
When Robert passed, I was left shattered. I knew it while I was going through it. I spent at least a year crying when no one was watching, grasping stolen moments trying to feel…something, emoting broken lines in poetic verse only to myself.
Over 21 years later, I’m still unsure all the pieces were collected, that I was fully formed anew. In journals, I am finding cracks and crevices, not where the light got in, but where the shadows leaked out, I tear page after page, a burst in stops and starts, attempts toward understanding and an infinite lack of conclusions.
It’s a wonder I still wonder after all I’ve gone through and felt, but with the discarding of material things comes the discarding of that shattered girl, who I was and when I was, the discarding of myriad lingerings on hopes and fears.
In discarding things and words, I feel a creeping melancholy for a life unrealized yet an unburdening of weight on my spirit too long nourished as something that should be.
In discarding things and words, I am shedding a life and tuning toward another.