bleak seeds

The small puffs of dandelion flower, blowing
hapless across the sheet metal surface of
a red car, implosive dots of white against
a dented field. Bleakness, and on a day when
the weather predicted never came, only a
rough wind which stirred up the loose threads
on fibrous stems, churned up the guts and
the mind. Bleakness; a day when nothing felt
intended, but instead haphazard, ricocheting,
like the gusts of seeds on the move. Later,
in the unruly quiet of the evening, a sickness:
dandelion flowers caught in uncombed hair.


chicken bones

Anxious twittering of an unknown bird in a
clouded morning. The smell of chicken stock
lingers in the empty kitchen, the pot lowered
to a simmer and occasionally emitting a rattle,
a rumble of heat and the steam trailing, and
outside the voice of the bird constantly shifts
in staccato bursts of activity, unmeasured
lines of song. The chicken roasted the night
before on a grill, its skin browned like sunburn,
body eviscerated before it arrived, fate decided
by the dynamics of hunger. No road accidents
or cancer or aneurysms; birth and food and
sleep and death, is all, and possibly happiness,
and possibly pain. So unlike the interrupted
rhythms of the songbird, with its uncertainty
of mating, its constant danger; and yet in the
open field of its life, this simple joy of morning,
improvised song floating above the wisps of fog
and the water boiling over the chicken bones.


dried roses

Yellow rose petals without their silken luster,
caught before they all fell: a rose hung
upside down to dry. Friendship; claustrophobia.
In the entropy of that time, the imposition of
absolute order, the calming effect of a warm
touch, a dried voice. A relation of colors and
intent; hollowed out form of her body, in
transition from a full bloom to a dusky afterlife.
An emptying out of the animus, perceived as
tranquility, as beauty. The petals guileless,
intricately unfolded from their saffron core.

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