Words like branches reach out to the sky;
Poets always walk alone and wonder why.

Poets always stare too long at the beautiful:
a child, the moon, a blueberry bush so full.

A random lady in front of a Friendly's
bends to touch a white flower, its green leaves

point up skyward.
Again, I see that metaphor, awkward

of life and beings all reaching up
as if to grow from bottom to top is not to give up.

As if to write about it makes it so.
My son says don't write about me though.

He asks, Is it about these crayons?
It is now, but way beyond

those four basic colors, red, yellow, green, blue,
which can't even capture you.

The riper of two fruits to my taste
is a man's words that fall from so much haste.

All this desire I try to feed,
my fingertips stained from picking blueberries.

A Sunday afternoon, a day almost done.
A poet almost satisfied with what she's begun

to articulate, to communicate:
a fishamajig on a plate,

a few french fries, the still blue skies
and something from deep within that plies

through the waves of black ink crashing down on the pages through this pen.
As if writing in a booth in a crowded Friendly's is a way to find my Zen.

Divine Light wants to pour into my head through an opening I am not sure I want to admit exists. If I am open, I am vulnerable. If I am closed, I may as well be dead.

Epiphany at the end of a poem (or at 2:39 am)

This is what a poet must do: make the invisible visible
a thought, a feeling, an idea
only poets see these
fly as a bird, run as a wolf, stand naked as a tree.

Red Dragon Breathing Flames

No one says the word baby and I
Place the box of tissues over the magazine cover of a round belly
I know she saw, the one unsterile detail in the room, the
Red dragon breathing flames,

Like the suction hose and speculum full of blood.
Her belly licks of stretch marks and scars,
Some fullness holding tight to walls
In that high tower, as if waiting to be rescued

Is a bad thing. No one knows the strength
Of princesses: women concrete in naïveté
Until it’s time to swim away
On white, fluffy clouds. On bubbles.

And she holds my hands too tight
And we fill the room with chatter
Contracting to anything
Born from the night and given to the light of day.

No one sees the curls of her hair stuck to her forehead
Or the brown bark in her eyes turn to water
To nurture the severed roots
As her fingers spasm in odd waves with the pain.

Definitely no one sees the secret muscle
Too deep inside layers of anatomy
Being tugged and pulled to almost weeping, and
Kahlua-colored iodine cold on thighs, which

Even the cotton balls can’t soften.

Origins of Sweet and Salt

Sweet sap of Earth and trees
of land-locked lines rushing through
the orange plastic, running into
buckets, oh fill thy cup with sweet sap of Earth
boiled and taken to holy shades, cooked
and poured raw over fresh-baked buns.

Salt water of Ocean and cavernous depths
of the space between what land we see
what lands we don't, oh Mother Ocean,
borne of her amniotic waters, pulled into her
tides, her mouths, her great, powerful surges
what salty dangers wash us clean, and what do we offer her
but littered shores?

If only we could combine the two.
It would be like a chocolate-covered pretzel,
we'd suck and bite its sweet-salt pleasure just to enjoy
that moment.