White Bird In Snow

White Bird In Snow

This unsleeping night

remembers winter for me

as it remembers the January hour

I was born, seeing past the still

green curl of April's exhausted leaf

the chill glassful of north wind,

so delicately sipped now

before the drowning.

It knows my name, it calls me

winter girl, drifted witch, 

snow-woman globed from rolled

frozen fog, compressed cloud wrack,
sentinel-eyed and carrot-beaked,
ice fingers melted then
rigid again around

a hollow pen;

bent wrist, bent back, ages

old, so old not even an ash-furred coal

glows from the parsed fire in my pale

flattened face.

The sleepless night

rustles with husks and remains;

a coyote stutters his hunger 

to the planked stars

and here where all things pass,

long sleep comes down the grass
where I wait

invisible and surprised

as a white bird

in October snow.

~October/November 2016

for Brendan at real toads 

from a still, white place

 






Images: House in Snow, 1890-94, by John Henry Twatcham
White Birds in Snow, by Ohara Koson
Public domain.

Goodbye

goodbye sweet singer and teller of truths

Babylon

Babylon

When the way is smooth

we trip on nothing

because we're made
 to kick things down.

When the belly's full

the brain cramps,

sells thought

for adrenaline.

Small griefs swell like seeds;

so the vein sprouts the needle,

the mountain's slick slope 
shakes its entropy, an avalanche

rumbling us down while

the summit recedes.

We forget

when living's too easy,

we make times get hard.

~February 2014.  revised November 2016

an old one revised, for Fireblossom Friday

Top: Aerial View of Capitol Hill, Public Domain  via wikimedia commons

Footer: Ruins of central Amarna, Egypt, the little temple of the Aton(Amarna Bâtiment du centre ville, zone du petit temple d'Aton)by Kurohito

Shared under a Creative Commons License  via wikimedai commons

Warrior

Warrior

The warrior walks

across the sky tonight

spinning the tale of resilience

twisting the tale of valor

wearing the worked hide of stars,

supple in battle yet

turning no blade;

marked for an early death

or a bloody age--

yet who would want to pass

through this night of sorrow and wrong

without a fight?

~Election Day, 2016

Image; reproduction of the Golden Horn of Gallehus, via wikimedia commons

Glass Alligators

Glass Alligators

Glass alligators

slide on their own bloat,

plagueships that float

over the muck

slurping it up, spitting it back;
it's so easy to break
if God finds the mistake
so they've learned how to make

their eyes look like toys'

too blank to annoy.

The glass alligators

stir their swizzlestick teeth

in a light liar's grin 

as they soft-lick your skin.   

(They just want to win.)

Their slick smoky sides
aren't built to hide
what's moving within:

the clockwork tossed salad

of death and money,

blood for oil, power-honey.

Their brittle scales ring

like a bad novel brings

out every cliche
on the side of a truck
to turn a quick buck,

and each soiled rotting page

bleeds the end of an age.

~Four days before the 2016 U.S. Presidential election

for grapeling, and my real friends at Real Toads

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Image: Muddy Alligators, 1917   by John Singer Sargent
Public domain