A Question of Belief

I’ve wondered since I was a child
Where butterflies go when they die
Thinking someplace of peace not wild
Softly floating in the whim
Of a breeze not tearing leaf or wing

The old cigar box where I kept a collection
When I was nine with pin and wing in place
A callus lack I can’t believe was me
Closed that box and left it in the attic free

Until I returned up ladder to the loft
Afraid of what I’d find or what the cost
to find ten pins gathering dust in gleam
No fragrance of spring or wing remained

And then today as if in answer to my question
Long ago asked to some one up in heaven
Where have they gone all color muted frail
when I had placed them so carefully in this cardboard jail

Today

On the front steps of a house in different town
A wing and then another had fallen down
No body held together the colors mighty chorus
But it seems like they were sent this day
with a definite purpose

The question asked so long ago must finally be
That given time an answer comes eventually

I’m saving them the wings like time
With feathers I have many now
Perhaps to test the strength of fragile things
Or more certainly to bless this heart of mine

Searching For the Wand

I see the open door, come two, come four, the dry dirt holds its tender cover
where leaves all color and blushful
dot the floor.
Thatched with muscle from the pine, I pull the plug on holding back
and cuddle up within me,
a tree so high
my sky is colored green,
and under me a bed too soft to lay my head is for dancing instead.

(Dare I ignite the muffled laughter
of the critters all scurry run beneath me?
After all, I’m standing on their pine needle rafters.)
One after another day, (should I weep?)
as the fabric not tatted falls around my feet?
No downpour from this leak can awaken youth;
yet, I see another truth.

Ardor in blood is born
and I am torn; each piece must consider how the wind sweeps the needle’s path onto a canvas without brush or paint, knowing that nothing lasts....or does it?

Something wild and wet in loving
can be made fertile again by mulching;
to faint upon a ground so considerate merits knowing who held the wand
that wonder made it
and also tracked the lines across my face and with one finger traced the fragile lace. 

The Children of Wednesday….For Sam and Ellie

The Children of Wednesday

Around and around they go up down
walls with stairs and pools
carpets of grass the pond all laced green
and the ladder to the slide
put aside until the sun days of summer coming
call the birds the cat the dog
just any bug in some delight
especially worms will be alright

On the swing a song is running
push rewind and play
hold me past the time of naps
past playgrounds and sand and the perfect shovel
sing with me your susurration’s best
we’ll make the shadows dance fast

The tree is opening leaf  and my balloon’s all up and bloated
Squeeze the monsters from the clay and hold my hand
the inches wave goodbye at the door
and I will love you again on another Wednesday
or more

She, Hope and the City

7 lines (or maybe a little more) from my current work in progress

Juliette is a grown woman now and her memory of the house is clear, but her surroundings have grown.  The timber of the staircase she can still count with her girlhood footsteps, but now she lives in a city, not just a house.  Her brother lives in another city far away and her grandfather and her mother died years ago.  She thinks of freeways and roads like veins and arteries.  She sometimes wishes for the sidewalks of her youth, where the innocence of her relationship with the supposed inanimate things around her, was pure.  Those things were safe and couldn't hurt her, though they overpowered her a few times with the depth and breadth of their cold steal and concrete.  When they did she would turn to the other place inside her.  In that place there was sun and shadow, color and movement and the fragrance of life.  A seed had fallen and a crack opened in time and a yellow flower took to calling the rain and the sun its lovers.  She knew these things but still could not say them out loud.

Tender Certain

Tender Certain

In the mirror of today
a thin veil whispers separation
for I saw her in my eyes
her curve of hip turned inspiration
‘til I was bloused and breasted light
with her younger woman's delight

From the corner of my glowing
behind the flowing silk of day
she turned like sunshine in my haze
no need for words just wave of knowing
she knew my heartbeat felt her gaze

Though this was only sway of curtain
it laced my fabric   tender certain

Hello February

Welcome to my life this day is blue
and I have learned a thing or two since last we met
though snow lays grounded in some places tease
the dappled sun in me feels blessed and pleased

Don’t try to freeze me till I break
I am most sure and filled with light
even in the night I dream of lavender wings
in joyful reminder that I no longer ache

She decided long ago to go
and I've mourned   my love to show
for many years I looked at February
as a month of fearful tragedy
now I see grief as a learning tool
one must pass through like any school
and I'll no longer show my love with sad
but rather in understanding love is glad

How about this
I let February be a place to see
a new flow within my stream
where loosened the rage of loss explores
the rippled lake of Evermore

not because I have forgotten Michelle
but choose to feel her love's warm spell
all the time