Poems and Lovelorn Thoughts Vol. XX

Shipwreck

The sky is a shipwreck today,

Ashen and lonely and quivering

Foam, its pale pallid eyes glazed

With staring stillness. I look into

Those petrified eyes

And I see

The sun, tucked somewhere behind the

Mist from the frothing sea, glinting

Like a grey pearl.  

Sky, you are dressed in memories today,

Your wooden beams creak out wailings

And moss-encrusted echoes that look

Strangely like white birds,

Later you will drape yourself in

Histories and Could-Have-Beens

And Fantasies and Nows. Later you will

Wreck, once more,

On the distant shores

You painted yesterday.  

Poppies

I loved the poppies too much

To fall asleep around them.

My purple feet tingled and

Sighed in the wet leaves,

I was like a fairy strolling in

A yellow peacoat under a garden

Of miniature umbrellas,

Silky scarlet domes

With beads of silver water.

They tasted like cherry dust

And looked like a child’s bright open eyes,

They swayed in place singing

Ancient songs I was born knowing.

How could I ever sleep through this,

This dew-glass universe, this scarlet

Tea party waltz keeping time with its

Own raspberry heart? How can I sleep,

When the stars burn this close to me?

Oh, I love the poppies too much

To be anything but alive around them.

A Walk to Town

The leaves whisper spidery somethings,

Soft and sad and serious,

And the town

Is a mile away.

The leaves quiver in the wind

Like sheets of hammered gold;

All along the path into the

Village they drip and ring, leaving

Ripples in the air. The leaves

Whisper, but I cannot tell if the sound

Is the plod of my footsteps

Or the echoes of my mind.

The leaves whisper spidery somethings,

Soft and sad and serious,

And the town

Is a mile away.

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