LITMIR.BIZ

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strange,

      the charged, the dangerous:

      taffeta rustle of cottonwood skirts,

      Orion’s owl, cruising at dusk,

      thunderhead rumble. Bone-deep,

      scrimshaw each day’s secret.

      Now, lighting the sandalwood candle,

      gather each strand you recall

      and the blue pen, like a needle.

      Suture what you can.

      I. Portals

      . . . where the unthinkable happens

      A Lone Bird, Balanced

      Riff after riff cascades from a cottonwood—

      too bad nobody here speaks Bird anymore.

      Oh, for a madcap diva in peacock blue,

      her feathered train a ladder of eyes.

      Give her a voice that breathes out honey

      and arias warm as the primal yawn:

      praise unfurled, wingspan wide . . .

      Or summon an earnest, mustachioed tenor

      whose cedary timbre makes us believe

      taproots bebop under our feet,

      desert hyacinth bulbs groove, beneath dunes,

      while sea wind composes its chorus of stones.

      Where is that diva now?

      We want a translation for sky

      unscrolling this endless score.

      And we call for a thousand Bocelli birds

      singing acres of wind and cloud

      with the breadth of a robe, fallen open.

      Exposed

      So why do I always spot the homely birds?

      Mouse-brown, on those twig feet

      you look like a refugee. Are you hurt,

      little wife? Are you brooding, as I am,

      over the latest spill of blood and feathers,

      songless, over the next ravaged nest?

      Talk to me. Creak open a pocket-lined wing

      concealing a cottontail, a collapsible hat.

      Convince me the song of Zion lives, before

      the long blue eye of this wind impels us

      to shelter where doubt builds its house:

      a tatter of leaves,

      dust, and greenstick fractures.

      She Can Only Try to Compose Herself

      The wood thrush at dusk echoes

      every day’s hope,

      each note a psalm of a self,

      a white blossom

      where rests fall between sounds

      like petals. See the way air

      cups a face that it loves, and light

      strikes the hollow

      curve of the throat, leaving it

      speechless.

      She Calls Him Dreamer

      They both sign up for “Reading the Land.”

      He is the summit she fails to map,

      a soul built for switchbacks, a seeker

      of wind-shaved stone. He straddles

      the ridge, beckoning.

      She’s his Wild Beauty,

      but also answers to Bean, a Great Plains girl,

      calm as horizon, a hill unmade.

      Sometimes she thinks his veins churn

      with glacial silt, clouding his gaze.

      “Piece of cake,” he calls.

      Stalling

      over red laces, extra-long, she criss-crosses

      the loose ends on her shins like a dancer,

      hoists her frameless Day-Glo-orange pack,

      sagging beneath the old Dacron bag,

      strapped on,

      tight as a budget.

      Eerie sounds drown out Dreamer’s instructions.

      Bean slow-pivots the compass points. Upwelling

      water re-lacquers the lake’s face, new ice

      flexing against older layers, a moan,

      as if a girl were

      trapped beneath.

      A dirt-brown bird with fidgets cracks its joke,

      like a cocklebur. Eyeing the heights,

      she ponders a dozen ways to leave,

      cradles a she-cone, each small wing

      hopeful as any waving hand.

      Next Breath, Best Breath

      For starters, don’t call it a cage,

      corralling the breath. Savvy fingertips

      mutely Braille two dozen ribs,

      each commandeering its own space

      24–7, salaaming and shifting,

      then rising. Selah-h-h-h . . .

      Next, re-envision those lungs as an inner atlas:

      one hundred routes

      funneling

      into branch lines,

      cloverleafs,

      cul de sacs.

      Wild as papyrus, they might be

      a psalter. A Rorschach. A centerfold.

      Or call them dual panniers

      flanking a breastbone,

      an albino koi kissing a mirror,

      all lips and flared silk.

      Now, boneless as a cat at rest,

      inhabit that next inhale, discerning

      how spacious a backbone can be,

      freeing shoulders to roll, the head to loll

      and lift, floating into place: the body

      aligned, alight, a home for the holy.

      Blue as Devotion

      Some love this world like a secret,

      a promise, a sacred tease:

      500 shades of blue—sea glass or sky,

      sapphire, jade, night. Cool hues

      play the rogue, retreat from our squint

      while come-hithering, luminous

      as the quiet splice of shadows and twilight,

      fickle as evening tide’s invocation

      and benediction.

      How many ways can one soul taste

      what

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