The forest leans over a wooden fence listening to highway’s splash and keen

Wondering at this great slice which refuses to yield green

The great snakes of civilization lifting scales of unfeeling beasts across their back

Allowing mites to scurry through the forest untouched and uncaring

Schoolboard green
air force blue
Florida orange
storm and forest
moss and agate
truck at the end of its journey
white and whiter where the fingers have drawn
faded elm
dark pine
look look look look look
of civilization
sketches of forest
pressed between the sky and us
the Earth brakes

On the ledger, I am disappearing ink
red gone yellow
give another farthing
another penny
another breath
to my life

here in the shade of curtained room
I sit amid the coiled bodies of love
a husband
two cats
and a dog
I’ve drunk paragraphs and sit
spinning through the distant churn of the washing machine
through the deeper caverns of memory
the spelunking shores of underground dreams
I sit and explore

Before night folds me in to moonlight
before sleep bruises my vision
I blur day’s edges

Lighted butterfly
thy lantern is too bright to view
all the Dreamlands I’ve to see

Closed eyes, I taste the newcoming dawn
carelessly clomp til I find the shore
closed eyes, I hear the playing gulls
and then and then

lighted butterfly
thy lantern is too bright to view
all the Dreamlands I’ve to see

I promised myself a full year of poetry

then on to short short stories

I find I’ve come to year’s edge
and find no desire to quit my pen
not for any other work, house included

but poetry

I’ve managed 6 notebooks front and back this year. Plus a bit. Alongside leaning- the next set of journals waiting to be filled next year.

Goals count. they make the creative move. dance. I’ve met folk along the way. And count them as must-reads on the daily.

So next year, I’m revisiting poems with work in mind,

driving out several double short stories.

writing more poetry.

attending more pretty readings. submitting seriously.

Getting more involved in the literary world in my small paw of the world. I’m playing with the idea of writing all my prose stories as poetry.

Happy New Year soon.

What are your writing goals?

I watch along dark paths
crouched
head cocked to his whistle
a tune haunting the spillways
and clover knots
seeping from his stretched throat
oh, birds ache in silence in his call
while all else shudders into shades and keens
the first clipped choking howls of mourning
echo past with his sliding trousers’ scuffs
and pontificating staff
his shadow never leaves this place though he continues humming then whistling
humming then whistling

With you at my chest

I could conquer all men

So rest while I caress your hair

War proposes a date every other argument

And I would not lose this moment

To the harpies of politics

I will hold this in memory

Throughout all the nights you will not be by my side

Sunset bled
He called her
No laughter in her teeth