Star Bright

Star Bright

A little star

blown on a crinkled wind

comes to the Deadhouse.

It pushes open a window

darts a beam

between cobweb cities

and empty night.

The Dead and the

Apprentice Dead,

mummified

mute, are of course

indifferent but

the ragged prisoner,

the Almost Dead,

lifts her darkened eyes

and suddenly

begins to breathe

 in the swelling rhythm

of the living firmament.

~November 2019

Personal Note: For those who may not have heard yet, my husband passed into the solar wind on October 18th, after months of quietly enduring as much pain and indignity as a human being can suffer. I think of him as released, and of the rest of my life as totally unknowable, but at least the wild dark-eyed muse seems to be back, vague in the shadows, teasing me with her throaty whisper.








Image: Untitled, by Zladislaw Beksinksi

Sea Trash

Sea Trash

You've never known you carried

that force

which breaks the idea's skin

with no time for

an aftertaste

neither regret

nor understanding;

that you made love

 a leaf lightly spinning

already dead but flying

laughing to be

no longer itself

only something falling

into the old gods' wide arms;

that the moment they were born

your words were

my  million separate siblings

fluttering, full from eating light

then put to fire's smoking

neither regret

nor understanding

for something changed and burning:

a life you never saw

that broke the brown wren's shell.

And now

sweet noise and dust-light sparkles

sea trash in the soft salt tide

of heartsblood oceans,

bobbing from here

to gone.

 April 2019

for my dear friend Shay's final Fireblossom Friday, where she asks us to "write about love for someone who does not know you love them."

at real toads

Images: both Untitled, by Zladislav Beksinksi via internet. Fair Use.

Nostalgia of Old Things

Nostalgia of Old Things

Old things like a pattern; blue

willow on china's bone, Celtic knot,

rune 

on moss-faced stone,

cross in the weave,

thunderbird in the beads.

Old things want

to fit a picture,

outrun the mirror, last forever

linger

in an eye's reflection, the

part that made it real.

Old things work

to make a picture, liver-spot

hands around the needle,

brush, pen, bead, hook,

the cursive book

of counted dreams.

Old things like a pattern

dog in his bed,

crow on the fence rail,

solsticing sun and feckless moon

flickering

timeless;

not the bed empty,

night rioting,

tea set shattered, not

the bloodsign on the door

where chaos has knocked

as the end.

~February 2019

Images via internet, no copyright infringement intended

Single Mitten

Single Mitten

You're lost.

You

the fact forgotten,

you 

the bramble-stolen path;

you 

the lantern empty,

the coat that feeds the moth;

the one

whose voice was taken,

whose breath

could not get in,

whose absence

 breaks the coupled;

the pocket-eaten mitten

that makes 

its partner useless,

a rag 

to be disposed;

you

the shadow flying,

you

the eye that's closed.

Lost.

~September 2018

Personal update: So many apologies for not reading or visiting these days, dear readers. I miss your poetry, and my own; all the voices which will no longer sing for me just now. My husband continues to fight the long defeat against his illness, but the time is getting short. I am hoping for some clarity on the other side, in which these frayed threads may be taken up again in some way. Til then, many thanks for all the concern, support and love you have shown me in this barren, foggy time.

 Image: top: author unknown, via internet. All rights reserved to author.

Gulls, 1982, ©joyannjones

Still Life

Still Life

I sit

by a dish of light

with darkness at my back.

I throw in words,

flowers of flame; only

the dry, bright ones--

you, remember, once, then--

while I leave the sodden

syllables in a pile--

now, tomorrow, alone, gone--

for nothing

will make them

burn.

We can't speak the tongues

of each other's pain;

still, we huddle in light

and forgive.

~August, 2018

Image: Stilleben mit Blumen, 1908, by Heinrich Kuhn    Public domain