She sat with her breasts poured out over
a hill of meadow with its teacup flowers
and starburst leaves,
wondering how many steps to moss
and how many arms could hold her
across an ever-anxious landscape,
browning and burning.
.
If there were wings in the offing,
such questions would be laughable
but with an angry earth,
she wants to feel held
before the end.
I watched a green-haired sloth
smoking on the porch
near the town limit sign with the cross.
.
Now climbing the ladder,
I ache to see the old west
before the gold rush
and before you grew so tall.
.
Away from summer, I should hum
the tune from my childhood zither
all red and flowered and much missed.
.
How did it go? Was it as fresh
as the breeze we drew our kites
up inside, funneling child laughs
and rhymes of sky castles
.
or did the wind that brought us here
sound of thunderous applause
for having made the journey to this valley?
.
I watched roads widen into
fields into oceans into planets
while the sloth smoked, tapping
the penny against the table.
.
If I had my zither, I would pluck
more than my flying dreams and sing
to you of rattlesnake waltzes.
.
This is good, remembering warmth
of old suns over young bones
as we grow longer in thought
and shrink in space.
.
I am an explorer hidden inside a mother
inside an afternoon of breaking skies
and beds of wild grasses.
She muttered a name under her breath,
his name, from so long ago, the wrinkles
around her eyes hadn’t closed off the view
yet and he still existed and came to her
in vivid visions. The visions remain
but nothing is vivid for her except
her great-grandmother’s apron
and the fireworks over the culm bank.
Love words, dangerous
as fairy tales should be, with death
and famine to be overcome
like a cloud melting an everlasting winter;
when you open to me, it’s
slippery and chafing, leaving us both raw
with the effort to hold something waning
as the letting go becomes creed.
He’s not a mouse in my mind;
he’s a marauder, slashing his way
downriver to render my garden insensible.
I pretend I’m a prize
and we’re not sad little figures
kicking up dust on a shelf.
He’s sure-footed and I’m carefree.
There are no tolls.
