heaven knows what’s inside of you.

draft 1
Excavation II
The hours I wait,
it’s not for nothing, it’s not.
Like a fern unraveling
her craggy hands,
it’s finger by finger
and plunge into
it’s photographic negative
as it reaches
for stones with breath inside,
for snowflakes cut
by the air they fall through,
and baskets woven by women
taught by women to be good.
My footsteps don’t fit into […]

Shared Secret
It’s what you accept.
Like yarn on a sweater to keep you warm.
Waves, we understand, bow down:
salt into salt, sand into sand.
They trouble themselves
with history.
If a trapeze artist, were to be a poet,
she’d understand.
I see birds flying in the night.
I see leaves bent down by rain.
I see the earth has become
my necklace. Saving homes,
without […]

Refrain
What takes one through
the green branches
of memory, twisted
in the lace
of a wedding dress,
grains of words tousle
like swirls of rice in a halo
gathered around bride and groom.
Piecemeal. Excavation.
Curation of the objects found.
Definitions become personal:
A ripe peach gathered in the skirt of a girl,
vegetable inks of maps drawn to remember
the way home, carved cranes on the […]