A funny thing happened on the way to Venus.
A trembling dandelion finally let go.
A horde of wicked wishes mingled with
innocent rubble and the resulting air
tasted of cotton candy- the good blue kind.
Shoes were shed. Fingers tingled.
We couldn’t stop touching each other.
All systems were in place by someone somewhere
sitting at a polished desk making giant decisions.
But there are places made for careful steps and there is this meadow.
We belong to green places, filled with the sweet hoax
of forever and rain.

I pretend to not understand the empty emptiness of the cello.
I’m called to keep my secrets safe.
Before morning breaks and before the spear of sunshine pierces
there’s still something dark;
maybe it’s not really empty but just
so full I can’t see through it.

Above the fluid
rise, a spear of sun
separated night
clouds and I knew that
I had been dreaming.

A dance so green could
not be real, not with
vivid instructions
from sly grasshoppers
to the moon and back.

I felt like asking
for more pages but
before the morning
finished its breaking
across my window,
I heard my own hum.

I clutched my tea as
sunrise shot through the
roof, and dreams faded
into that sweet realm
where one can’t be sure
where the song came from.

bare apple and walnut trees
crumbling stone walls
echoes of lowing cows
daddy’s been gone 50 years

faded crinoline and fretted aprons
creaky rocking chairs
winter has taken all

He was mine through a country song,
she said, and I knew she meant the dance
in winter hay mostly covered in snow.

Heaving and hoeing in shadow
a harvest not innocent or wicked,
sort of alive and in flux, not like a bruise
but rather a soft flowing mercy.
Toiling atop a mound of pipe,
they make a merry windfall.