Day: February 6, 2011

In the garden, children play,
Fresh petals tease unblemished skin.
Young eyes create the universe,
Unbounded by memory or anticipation.
Wordless but for laughter,
Without definition all is possible.
Stomach full and mind empty,
All is blissful.

In the fields, the young toil,
Backs grow strong with life’s labor.
Deft hands cary the load of old and new.
Love is made to a world of named things,
Children born and cared for,
Tired bodies sleep soundly.

In the forest, the old travel,
Laden with possessions, unknowns regarded with fear.
Patterned behavior flows from patterened minds.
Clinging to good with eyes on salvation.

On the mountain, death sits,
The world illuminated in blood and fire.

~r

A December sunrise over New Mexico brings an end

to the embryonic slumber of this strange girl’s earthen hovel.

Stepping outside to piss,

a stream splashes gorges through the frosted ground as

steam rises to the occasion.

On the eastern horizon,

the sun pokes his golden thorns over

the tattered edges of the Sangre De Cristo Mountains. Shadows disappear

as the glowing aura sprinkles a dash of tangerine below,

soft like baby’s breath. Bashful stars mill about

in the violet currents to the west.

Tipsy-toed, they curtsy and laugh

and kiss their farewells

to midnight’s glistening dew.

The bitter cold encapsulates, breathing deep to

suck with scorched lungs just

for a taste of something so sweet,

so frigid,

that it breaks the skin on morning teeth.

A coyote caterwauls to the dimmed moon, crying for her capitulation

to the onslaught of day,

the beast’s cackles ring of freedom’s waking revelry.

But nothing else.

No words,

no catch phrases or wasted breath from those

who buzz or whiz or clamor or curse.

All are frozen dead in their beds

as the wind whirls and gusts scatter dust

from brittle sagebrush needles.

Breaking trance,

her subtle call from the squatty shelter shatters lonely silence,

as this desert maiden before me

paces barefoot on sandstone steps.

With eyes that sparkle like winter jasmine

her whisper nibbles on my ear,

“Coffee?”

The simplicity is overwhelming.

“Absolutely.”