tryingpoetry

The Wearing Off

Silent Quiet Coziness The newness of a change Seeks your delight smells out your deep seated echos

Welcome labor Long steps that think to spill cold between the seams seat under my coat

Heavy weight of water swollen with warmth Whip cracked and a hot hearth flickering mantle

Three Minds

Science peered skeptically at Faery While legend stood akimbo in a garden Faery glowered back at the numbers

They argued about whose people were most fair and noble as though they were gods followed and worshiped

Until one day they saw their people were all the same

Unquenchably curious spinners of yarns listening and reading as though it was air

Everything is Damp

Even the copper bark of the Madrona tree is ruddy and the Moss and Fens and Fungus grow everywhere now The land is dark and wet and the colors are grays, browns and greens

The cold seeps in over time slowly until the fingers don't work and I stumble around

The drips in the woods are indicators of their distance and even the eel grass runs off the water

The sun can't get through the silted water running first left to right and then right to left

Far Away

A child wondered how things work And made up answers when she didn't know

The world grew crystalized shapes that spread Through space on contact and she knew the true answers

One day she walked through soaking wet stardust A thick fog through blurred moonlight behind a shaggy fir tree

Looking far off where her star might have been and many more might be

At Home

Hallogen sparks peek through they grey mist Over a low muddy tide in the bay on late December

Bloody Noses

My first bloody nose landed my butt on the concrete tears and shock

Pain and people deliver it?

My second bloody noses and I landed one back the punch to the jaw

I delivered it too and the jerk of reaction?

My third bloody nose and I stopped it first Push and shove and dig in and scrap and bob and weave and taunt

Cockiness as a dance.

One day I bloodied a nose and wasn't asked to stay.

Why did I swing?
Who am I again?

My fourth bloody nose and I got up to fight but I only stood up.

Accepted the warm wet iron on my teeth and mouth.

I know who I am.

My fifth bloody nose will come and I will sit calmly fold my hands on my stomach and ask... “Why are you hurting?”

Two White Dogs

Lugnut and Old Boy bark at a four point buck eating fermented apples under a gnarled old tree

They bark at joggers fit and annoyed at the intrusion into their ritual

Two fluffy texans french dogs left and rescued and came home to the wet woods the boggy hollow

Their shift starts before mine Before I leave And ends after mine Before I sleep

They howl at the sirens of police and firemen heralds of needed help

And they greet the delivery people so that they know they may not stay long

They ward off the wild things the raccoons and opossum and yell at the uncaring ravens to begone

And the Coyote's call the yammering yelps sing a song of battle in Ranger's heart so he paces back and forth and whines – “Let me at em!”

Then in the evening they come inside, fences secure treats and headrubs and wrasslin

Until we all sleep Rex on the couch, sprawled out and Ranger next to our bed, childishly close and wary as Cerberus

Four lbs and fit in one hand and on my mind NO In my mind like mycelium on a forrest floor.

Flushing like mushrooms with the seasons or rain or trauma or joy

She left home but my mind still leaves room for her and what is left and still

Like a tree that thinks the fungus is still there that makes strange gloaming melancholies and whispers

She is still on my mind, in my heart and my soul. The pieces I gave her freely are gone.

I'm detached armor, shield and sword on a rack at home if she decides she needs them

But the rust is coming because she doesn't

Protector with no root.

Fast wisdom and a slow body never made me mad before.

But now I am

The wind in the city has so many names

No portent of the weather No kiss of far off trees

It has addresses and shorter lifespans

Brought about by smaller changes manmade and unexpected

The 4th ave breeze from rush hour The Broadway gusts bourn of channeled winds

Whistling in the subways and trees and tunnels

But the four Wild Winds old as time Named for the turn of the earth Children of the Rising and Setting sun Great siblings of the seas Patient carvers of mountains and sometimes angry rotations. Constant their fickle Their children the clouds in tow or behind

Sailors and Fishermen know them Mountain climbers know them

The people of the city know them but most by their children and grand children and their doppler echos

Like the broadway gusts flitting to and fro without stopping at the whim of...

The Four know the children of the earth As Gods almost eternal paying heed to the times With reckless abandon Girdling mother earth pole to equator

The Cascade foothills Stretch out like Spring walking from winter

Over wet fields Soon to be filled Cold mornings still with frost

Morning eyes and long sinew Yawn the evening sun Exhale the clouds

then she looks around for her book and her dog

rolls on her side and waits for coffee and the sound of feet on the stairs

her eyes the grey blue of a foggy morning her humor as clear and bright when the sun burns the clouds off

comfort and hope mixed with the challenge

to weed the garden, ready the year and laugh