In The Wild

A female leopard

lives alone

and likes it.

She casts a solitary

shadow

on the savanna.

She is a ghost

of the gorge,

a wraith

at the waterhole.

Nocturnal

and nomadic,

she hunts,
mates,

and wanders the night

without 

ever establishing

a permanent den
until

she has a cub.

Finding the animal within for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads

Black

Walking away
you made the blues turn black
and the rivers run red
as my first time.

Walking away
you shouldn't turn your back
on the girl you made
and then made cry.

Fretting your frets
and worrying your whimsy.
No queen in the hive,
the honey is gone.

Don't the spotlight burn
with the set list empty?
Turned your back on the girl
birthin' the songs.

Lord, don't it make the blues turn black?

A little jam for Poetry Jam.
Don't forget to check out my interview at Real Toads!

No Swimming

I wasn't prepared

for the curl of your river wet hair

against my fingers.

Or, for the thousand bits of sky

reflected on your skin.

And, as all of my years of kick and stroke and breath

left me

leaden,

you gathered me and whispered,

"Shhh . . .

It's only drowning."

A Magpie Tale

I was interviewed over at Real Toads today.  Mary did a fantastic job of keeping me from sounding like a complete moron.  Check it out!

Wish You Were Here

You are the dark laugh
at the bottom of the glass,
the icy glint of ten till two,
the telltale scrapes
of a key
trying blindly to find its way home.

Your are your own perpetual night
emaciating bone and blood
to attitude in thigh high boots
and sighs.

You are a mess
of merging melancholies,
pheromones, and phone numbers
sticking to the floor.

You are a Wish You Were Here  postcard
fluttering to rest
on the thrift-store rug
of memory
lying.

For dverse

Your Flower

I pressed your flower between the pages
of a book I hadn't written
as the words you hadn't spoken
worked their way into my ear.

Crushed by the weight
of all that hadn't happened
your flower fell to nothing.
Was it ever really here?