Moments fall through my fingers, grains blown in the wind of turning planets. This is all I have, this square of grass, this pinprick of time. A heartbeat. A flashing thought. And so I dry my eyes, and start again.
~~~
The world in the hours before dawn is rich with story. In the dark, eyes closed, cat purring in my lap, my mind fills with words I must write, jewels tumbling from the place where imagination is born: overflowing my palms, spilling from my fingers to the page.
~~~
It should not surprise me that each of my novels has a poem at its core.
And “each of my novels” means the one I am writing now, and the three that are waiting in my journal for their turn.
One of those still in the journal has the working title Sky+Moon—which, yes, is bad but will lead to something better—and these two work-in-progress poems. (Which, yes, are also straight from the roughest of rough notes, but ya gotta dance with who brung ya.)
I
When I see you
your fine chin and your
broad shoulder, the curved line
of your waist and the sway
of your hip, your long arms and strong
legs—with their hands and their
feet dancing through air as you
walk
toward me,
my heart
leaps the space between
us, before my body and
my head have known
what they must do
II
Lie beside me on the shaded grass
your head on my shoulder
the sun on our feet,
lie here and I will tell you
the story of our lives, when you
are my beloved and I hold you finely
as the sky does the moon.
~ ~ ~
Make it
like a prayer
that first step
onto fresh snow.
In this small, quiet moment
you have not yet
invented yourself.
~~~
I have cut my heart
into petals, strewn them
at your feet.
Walk to me.
~~~
Loneliness has gaps
where joy
or love
can live for just a breath
~~~
Naked trees pull the
grey sky close—November’s cloth
dressing their bare limbs
~~~
Pillars of rain bash
mile-high against the shore: here
ancient trees endure
~~~
Ten a.m., three quarters through February, I’m driving along 7th Line to town, tall trees and deep snow on either side, a house or two glimpsed through branches: suddenly, ahead, as the road slopes up, from the trees on the right bounds a black animal, leaping across the road from one side of the woods to the other.
~~~
