What a world *edited!*

I’m melting, I’m melting. No, no 17-year-old girl with her burgeoning body corseted to look more child-like, holding a small black dog, has just thrown a bucket of water on me, but here I sit on a day that is expected to go all the way up to 70 degrees F, and our office building, having kept us nippy all winter long, now seems determined to see us all turned to puddles in our cubicles.

It is, however, day 38/3 (ask not what the 3 is; suffice it to say it is a count I’m keeping on something other than my smoke freedom). The *EDIT* tulips daffodils (you’d think I’d remember the name of my favorite spring flower) */EDIT* finally decided to show up in the courtyard, and the trees on Cherry Street are about to break out in all their frowsy white petaled madness (so shortlived; then they go undercover, disguised as just some more green leaved trees). Even though it will go colder and wetter on the morrow, there is no longer any denying that spring is here. Honest.

Brevity

Wiping away every trace
saving up resources until enough is found
for horizon painting
sunset and all
awash in colors claimed by the southwest
existing everywhere in permutations
pigments of earth and sky
permeating water and air

Sand seems a separate entity
uncertain
changing as it does in the tide’s flow
giving birth to mountains in pebbles
then taking it all back again
the sea would have us know
earth is not the only mother
just a showy pushy one

We have entered a new space
will you hold my hand as I go
to unlock tomorrow
when I flinch against reflexes
from slammed doors I’ve known
where is the glen of my context
wait and when I go
I’ll remember desert colors under glass

~~~~~~~~~~

Bandannas and blood

How you struggled
with no ounce of a damn left to give
to pass me all that you believed in
once upon a time

Icons spotted with lichen
lying in an attic
stored with blood speckled kerchiefs
monogrammed handkerchiefs
laced with tales of times gone by

Gray with injustice
how you struggled for nobility
against the downward rush
cascade of years in fears and tears
one stalwart soul standing so alone
against the maelstrom of your fate

~~~~~~~~~~

Bus observation

She doesn’t look well
eyes hollow
a smile as heavy as
an alabaster rosary