quivering voice, you close your eyes

                    into lacquered sleep, hummed quiet.

every dawn and dusk of 

my life stitched in prayer.

At the edge

of a dainty empty town

that rests at the end of 

a long shrinking road

that crawls around the 

midriff of a serpentine 

circle of wintered trees

whose shadows hover 

bare as antelope horns 

over a flickering pond

resembling a loneliness

in the belly of my body

its umbilicus nestled in

your terminal memory 

like the rippling totems

strung into prayer flags

colorful, stretched tight

the rage of quarantined

s.

c.

r.

e. 

a. 

m. 

s.

At the edge

of our mystery

now stands a sign —

do not resuscitate, this

l.

i.

f.

e.

Some questions start in the center of my belly, a soft hunger

others stumble out of my mouth, like acres of wild gardens

they fall from the sky, into the backyard of my night storms

stay like watchful steps of an elephant on my hunter’s heart

I fill my breastbones with the fallen feathers from my porch

            with quills, I draw ripples over the river between us

            I conjure some answers and embroider each with a   

            daisy stitch into the stretch circles that are emerging

            around my middle, each concentric ring now coded

            with questions and answers, like the stump of a tree.

            each code permanent as it keeps vigil on my ghosts.

If a cemetery sang, even powdered snow would melt in remorse

If the dead talk, they would sing at sundown in many languages 

If the pungent earth inside graves danced, stubbed grass will sway

If funeral ceremonies truly held ceremony, lies would live inside coffins

If letters on all tombstones were poems, then birds might perch longer

If the magnolia canopies stayed white, hope could bleach into bones

If a no moon night was less monosyllabic, I would sleep under the sky

Somewhere your grave will stay cradled in tears

Somewhere grief will enter cemeteries, bringing

a fistful of presence to leave behind on the paths

Somewhere a sparrow holds a spirit on her wings

Like Dickinson’s spider, I too could make

my hours into lace, so much labor, care as

it strings immaculate silence.

Instead, I am forever working my way out

of snowflake webs, crawling away and away

from the nibbling winter cold.  

At each exit, I chase orb weavers, hoping to

learn the art of weaving a web, nearly blind. 

then eating it, no escape. 

My gods do not stir, they are addicted to the 

burden of a hubris, where spiders spit white

in mouthfuls of delight.

A dawn waits at the edge of hexagonal nights

lingering in coma, an equilibrium of strained

light, lingering like silk.

Like spiders, I too spin tendrils of lightless

ness, stay trapped inside naked hollows of

my own porcelain bones.