Children laughing out to sea
All his sea dreams come to me
--Joni Mitchell
I heard corn grow as a child and now everything is noise.
I watch for signs I'm tempting fate, that the lack of water in my youth-- in voracious country (aphids, crows, moles)-- is not my destiny.
Chased by hounds across stubbled fields into the last minute of land, without release.
Taught the alphabet in spurts, I did not connect letters-- little soldiers in formation. When I learned cursive, I began to think. When I first made a question mark I was born.
Which film of a building's collapse will most resemble mine?
Under Crucian water, fish glow blue, turquoise, yellow among coral. Do they darken like my photos when I'm not watching? Like sea as memory in each of us?
Land of land-- feeling usurped by angry crops. Grief denied as fully as they stole nutrients and ate souls.
Nothing lived for beauty.
How long since a kiss meant.
I envy a collage's longing for the whole picture. Once I stood at the tip of La Gaspesie, bare feet braving stones, shells to touch the colossal rock piercing Golfe St. Laurent. Now I am small, unkowing-- a torn-off piece.
In St. Croix I can depend on nothing. Love is a terrible thing here.
I dream oceans, hidden treasure, sunset on the Caribbean.
The surest sign is that I will not need an ark, though In my head I see lines leading into one and there is not a second one of me.
--published in Gihon River Review