Life’s Little Misdirections 🥀🦋

Rewrites: Sedona / War Of Youth / Prose And Dead Men

On a dust plain, you see heat rise,
distort dry fauna fading green.
Bones ache, but your blooms distract,
help me heal in precious, amber light.

In porch shade we rock, glide
side by side in silence
all these years. A moment arrives
so perfect, I kiss you,
passionately, again, feel
the cicadas unrest and tremor.

We could strip to salt flesh I long to devour.
You stand to refill our lemonade.
My hand brushes the tender underside
of your boot cut denim.
Not long is dinner, sunset in Sedona.

We will afford the loss of sunrise.
Cayenne canyon of soaring rock
fences us willingly within.
No taste for dinner but soft cotton.
Aroma of sandalwood encircles
cooling limbs entwined. I feel
beating beneath breathing
and hold the tender core
like a baby.

Thankful, all these years
absorbing color of sunrises
and the view across a shared room.
You could be a memory,
constant in dreams,
my soul’s red canyon.


"The Tender Core (Sedona)" 

War Of Youth

When he scooped you from the earth,
carried you
to the speeding car that brought you down
to the gulch
where dutiful bees stung the small flesh,
he realized war again —

nothing like he ever fought
but was prepared for.

meanwhile, I
obsessively plucked petals from white daisies,
blissful, unaware
how brutal life could be
until rubber complained
to the hot blacktop —
when I heard his true love in wails echo
above stubborn birch, pine and hardwood
that every aware animal could witness.

at seven, I believed
he loved a small, bloody boy more,
whimpering in clover
with the yellow and black, and
fractured leg to set.
glowing white angels would bathe
and tend contusions and abrasions,
cheer a freckled chin.

in my designated corner,
a toy for distraction
did not deter wonder —
if I hurt myself,
would he love me more?


"A War Of Youth " 

Prose and Dead Men

Tiger-striped flannel and matching ball cap,
if slid askew, would remind you
of the old man sitting on the tailgate of his blue Ford,
sheltered amid flocked customers
and other vegetable growers. Cracking wise
in the corner parking lot of the local farmer’s market,
his hat true, angled in the locked position.
A habit I suppose from serving in military.

Big John missed death as a sentry in Guam
by just one hour, relieved of post before another throat slit,
some nameless brother in arms.
A story you were not privy until a man.

I scribble these musings in secret journals --
hollow words spun from a corner booth for hours
at mic’ed readings where no one peruses
the printed commitments amid pregnant pauses.
My endless voice scratchings echo an arena choked,
with tears in my eyes not for him but
some liberal heart bleeding, pleading
actualize the purpose of my prose.


"Prose And Dead Men"