Four Prayers with the Lion's Paw

I stretch my arms to my Beloved
as a child barefoot in the snow,
and beg to be swung into the air.
He
honeymoon-holds me,
swinging me, singing me into
Delight.

You light my eyes, Beloved,
with the butter-yellow breath
of Easter
and I hope you crack me open
like a painted Easter egg,
spilling gold
on starving land.

Beloved,
You make me like a hefty stone
loged into a riverbed,
wailing silently
in anguish
as the slow persistent tugging
of your love erodes me
grain by grain,
washing me
at last into the sea.

You are holding up a mirror, God,
and showing me two "me"s I might yet be.
I should ask you for the courage
to choose the one who dances to the sun,
release the one who's dragging all the shackles.
But really, God, what I want
is to slap the mirror from your hands
and go running over the jagged broken pieces into your arms.

Alone

Alone is a word
that falls to the floor and clatters.
Alone is cold tea.
Alone is a face
with no lashes,
no lips.

As I Drove Home at Midnight

My headlights blazed a trail
of street sign stars
and mailbox moons,
sun-yellow glare to guide me home,
beneath a hundred million flecks of whitest light,
the stars as cold and far as raw Duluth.

I thought about you then,
the hallowed awe, in which you spread
yourself beneath a milky sky,
the smooth and starless drowse of clouds.

I wanted then to bring you back,
below the black and blue bedazzle of the night,
to spread myself
upon you, like a ball
of sweet-cream butter,
melting on the flushed, astonished
surface of you, love.

I longed to turn my face to God
and howl,
and howl until the stars came pulsing down,
and carried with a breath of you.

Violet's Poise

Violet's vexed
by scars and scrapes;
Violet sashays
on bruised shins.
Violet snags her skirts on her high heels.

Violet is a stranger in her skin;
she batters both her elbows, all ten toes,
into the furniture,
the floor.
Are Violet's shoes a smidge too wide?
Is Violet’s vision crooked?

No.
Violet failed to grow
into her bursting woman's body.
Violet wears adulthood
like a fruited, feathered hat.
Violet wears maturity
like water wears the moon--
scintillating, flimsy,
gravitational.

Changelings

We lurch into a shroud of dewy rain,
distorting Greyhound windows into green
and brown oil-paintings flecked with sheep.
The clotted air, our faces dull as stone
give allusion to an older age;
even the young smell ancient on this isle.

Although we move as one, we're each an isle
within our heads; our thoughts fall soft as rain
and trickle down into a distant age
of Lughnasadh upon the hills of green,
of tribal dances, bonfires, and of stone-
walled castles, each besieged with sheep.

Along the narrow road lie six dead sheep,
their bodies fertilizing dirt. This isle
is but a floating, life-encrusted stone,
and stones push up in graveyards in the rain--
fixed and ashen gardens-- while the green
grass sprouts and fades, age after age.

The rocky shores and fields seem without age,
touched only by the placid drifts of sheep
that snip the narrow tips of blades of green.
Below the sheep, the dirt, the Emerald Isle
lives timelessly, and only drops of rain
will touch the fae that doze beneath the stone.

We study, analyze, and turn to stone
these living sprites and nymphs of ancient age,
while we, the flesh and blood melt into rain,
fade into shades. We're changelings here, and sheep
one day will tread over our wings; the isle
has drawn us all beneath the stone, the green.

The transformation now, from grey to green
is etched upon our faces, chiseled stone.
And when our ashen bodies fly the isle,
our spirits, far beneath, will cease to age.
Although we leave the ocean, leave the sheep,
at Lughnasadh we'll dance in Irish rain.

And still the Emerald Isle, veiled in green,
washes her fae with rain beneath the stone,
till changelings rule the age... along with sheep.

Ode to an Old Book

The words are wearing
from your spine
in sober gradient,
resolutely raven at the opening “S,”
but trailing to a barely-brown
just fifteen letters later.
Still, your hardy spine supports
six-hundred pages,
yellowing and smelling of vanilla,
dust, and antique sweat.
I thrust my nose
and lips and cheeks
into the lusty center of you,
gasping like I might inhale
the very punctuation
set upon your grainy paper.

Violet Fades

Violet wears pajama pants
her mother bought,
Pooh Bear and honey pots
bunched into his torpid palms.
Her arm disentangles
to tap the remote,
digital chatter to drown
out the scuffle
of fabric and flesh.
Green-white light washes
out his face, as he leans,
more than friends,
over Violet's sighing mouth.
This isn't what she wanted.
So, as her body—
feral, fickle— yields,
Violet fades away.

Later, Violet builds herself
a memory,
shiny, with the scent of new plastic.
Violet rested just her head
upon his lap,
and his cool, broad hands stroked
just her hair.
And when the movie ended,
he leaned, her friend,
over her smiling mouth,
to brush
just a butterfly kiss
between her eyes.