barefoot in the stiff grass

I walk barefoot in the stiff grass of an 80-degree day, winter only three days out.

It's the first time since late April that I've gone without shoes further than across the room or about the house momentarily. Supporting my arch had been paramount and a single pair of shoes saw me through summer and into August; two new pair were bought for the school year, and all the cute heels I adored were given away or donated. But I have missed connecting to the earth, to touch, certain needs involuntarily squelched by other needs, the integral by the urgent. 

In the distance, the painter’s radio plays a local Hispanic station and I was content to sit on the step, feet bare on the warm concrete until I rose to walk row by row watching the ground, watching my feet, shoeless and toes painted bright in Neiman Marcus Red. I walk and stop and stoop and stand and walk again. Slow.

Pockets bulging with pecans, feeling each prick and poke none too gentle on tender soles, I walk anyway. I walk because I can. I walk because I need, and because I know I am not quite there yet.

on a dark high shelf

A baby white snake slithered

on a dark high shelf

this was

of which she dreamt once

Tarot: the death card drew

And drew and drew

very soon

death became her

the shedding

the death

the shedding

the death

Growth or no

her heart yearns

for the never was

of lovers lost

so close so far

but she may not be

where she thinks yet

something may remain

unshed

something in the way

on a dark high shelf

what came was now

Having focused

where she ought

where she should

on the idealism of

…Eventually

she slept overlong

in the complacency

of “ it will come”

and when she woke

she woke to words

to divulgences

when she woke

she woke

to the morning

cocooned in flesh

that fit just right

but what came,

was not Eventually

what came was Now

new moon

fervor of the full moon has calmed

post-coital

words which waxed full, throbbing

wane satisfactorily

she’d smoke if she smoked

and they have yet to touch

blue calm

It was neither noon nor sunrise,
sunset or twilight lit

there was only
the blue calm of midnight
when the moon tempts lovers
toward illicit liaisons
when she allows to linger
and forward thoughts

of flesh between teeth.

in a vessel

she don’t

talk about these things

keeps her worry

in a vessel where

ink like blood the scratch-scratch

crazy goes

so her smile can

lit her lips ablaze

with a slow lick and

her mind

stays shiny

he though,

he gets the thick of it

so she mutters

a little crazy his way