All the Rorschach dancers

move sideways across the page

and I’m helpless to keep still, as I

shimmy with my demons.

Sequined corn fields serve as the ballroom.

Nothing travels the world, she whispered.

Not birds or ships or whales or butterflies,

though we’re taught to believe otherwise.

Flight only removes us temporarily.

Old women now give birth

and children rule lost islands.

We’re all lost and it’s sort of beautiful.

There’s no sense to be made of the wavy

pattern of the laundry basket yet

I can’t turn away from counting the spaces;

I tried singing

but you didn’t hear me

and as the traitorous curtains part for

the sliver of sun that wants to brand me,

I scramble to hide.

The heron floated above

pussy willows and bellowing frogs,

not concerned about low flutterings

of girls in small buildings

with babies swirling down toilets

bits at a time.

There’s no mistaking the keening sound

of misery despite the miracle of

indoor plumbing.

There’s no chance that a giant and a fairy

could make a happy wood sprite.

Our feet must leave the ground to fly.

Turmoil is found by mixing elements,

like a Maxfield Parrish collage

made of cheese, copper, and gum.

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.