with all my love...

a thing with feathers
for Helen

I visited your poem
dressed in black

Silver framed words
that glistened Hope

Exquisite script curled
around faded gingham

We share these words
but at different times

In which I ramble on about my mother's winter flowers

on mom’s dining room table

It wasn’t an expensive bowl, a
full moon, with a crater surface
of pebbles layered with water.

The new paper white roots barely
bruised as they dug slowly to the
concave surface of the bottom.

Forced shoots poked up through
the bulb, inevitable, as light strikes
out from a lampshade at night.

Edit:

A full moon, a crater surface
of pebbles layered with water,
It wasn’t an expensive bowl.

The new paper white roots barely
bruised as they dug slowly to the
concave surface of the bottom.

Forced shoots poked up through
the bulb, inevitable, as light strikes
out from a lampshade at night.

Everything

When honey freezes
It becomes a block of
sheer amber, glowing
from inner depths.

It thaws, crystalline
circles forming around
the mason jar. Slow
weeping rivers snake
down the sides of glass;

and then it’s warm,
again, and winter means
Nothing.

The Secret Life

The Secret Life
For Kathleen

The secret life of mothers
is reflected in the pointed wave,
flickering behind the bonfire,
cast against the faded siding.

The shadow blurs and forms
into new shapes, water stains
bleeding into each other, a 
slow, love-dance in the dark.