GRAVITY

Here are a few selections from my book, Gravity, which will be released by Coastal Villages Press in Spring, 2006:



MY SISTER



My sister, oh, my sister,
where did you go?
Your garden that bore fruit
with weeding and blister
is now needing water
and spring’s new suit.
The friend’s balm of aloe
won’t salve the shoot
of seeds that won’t grow.

Spreading deeply trenched
‘side the soil forever brown,
I am left to gather
seeds left unquenched.
I’m the crying left daughter,
trying in ceaseless blather
to calm the gossiped town;
they’d all, if they’d rather,
send you straight on down.




PLEASURE


You tell me to ignore the nights
of our sweet soft fog,
whispered touch of skin on skin
that faintly pressed upon my mind
templates of everlasting nexus.

Wistful tenets of done love
blandish my eyes to see
the sweet soft fog in my dreams
that blankets me in night’s purlieu.
Daylight damns my pleasure.



SCHOOL DAY


I pull a squirmy boy
into an unforgiving jacket
on a quiet winter morning
that is dark as my heart;

his belly full of oatmeal
and heart full of wonder,
I nudge him off to school
to smile upon his day.

He doesn’t know that I am
being dragged into a vortex,
a cubicle to sit in
while he learns how to count.

The world pulls me into
an unforgiving morning,
my eyelashes wet,
he kisses ‘bye and says, “Love!”

He will count forever.