Poetry
-
Tonight
out driving
just to drive
and déjà vu
being young
Montana country life.
Rolling hills and rolling tires
fields and fence
posts holding ditches out of pastures.
Swerving into the wrong lane
‘cause no one else was there.
Screaming past stacks of hay bales
and speed limit signs
needle buried deep.
Meadowlarks so loud we heard them
even in the car
even with the music on
though it didn’t need to be.
Words were better
conversation
rolling to a stop on dirt roads
still in Drive but paused
to watch the pink and orange sky
sink behind a farmhouse
and turning windmill.
Knowing it was time to go home
wanting to stay out in the air
the space
land and heaven meeting in a natural place
in a huge circle all around us.
Power lines criss-cross to ground us
and remind us up and down.
Top down
gravel crunching at our 5 miles an hour
the road ahead forgotten
and stars.
Déjà vu so good
I wish I could remember
how I felt it then. -
As Published in Issue 1 of FeverDream Magazine (2020)
Bright orange dust on fingers
then on white shorts.
Fingers drawn magnetically
then repelled like magnets flipped
as bees weaved drunkenly
through tiger lily stalks.
Starlings screeched above
to keep those dirty shorts
out of their territory
a preview of the scolding
I’d later be served.
May as well get dirty, now.
Feet bare in the sharp, dry grass
sweat stinging sunburned skin
the stretched ache of palms
blistered from a swinging rope.
Cool boards against our back
as we collapsed at the top of
play structure, fortress, pirate ship
and gossiped like robin and meadowlark.
But I was more like a killdeer
my secrets hidden at ground level
like so many precious eggs
and their safety depended on
my distraction. -
Indecision is a bed of bones.
The dispersing carcasses of opportunity.
Fed them little
tried to suss out which was the best
the strongest
until they starved
and rotted
while I wished for certainty
and inspiration
that never came.
Indecision is a corpse road,
ghost and shadows
winding along it
taunting me with maybes
should’a, could’a, would’a
but it’s too late.
You could’ve made wings of these bones
but you curl up on them instead.