there is a touch of crazy on the wind today though the air, pushed warm and dry from an invisible north beyond the mountains hardly moves at all. like living on borrowed air the day breathes shallow, toads have taken the ponds sitting silent amongst the lilly pads their measured breath rippling the water…
it all belongs to the sky the rush of ocean and shadow horizon, it all belongs to darkness of night and the stars that lean forward touching skin with light older than thought, listening among the cicadas for the sound of our breath.
it is the simplest thing to swallow the earth small seeds yield green leaves bright against rich soil – handfuls of greens fresh chopped with sharp garlic and moistened with olive oil spooned generous onto pasta new rolled and hung on the elder staff to dry. it is the simplest thing to eat the earth…
eventually the streptocarpus will fall its sky petals to the quiet water below like the weight of all that beauty in the world becomes just too heavy to hold.
i was nearly twenty before i met anyone who lived by words alone, whose face shone with the taste of them spoken in small rooms of listeners, who lived light in this world – half of him hunting and gleaning the shadow world for words that could hold this falling apart. cancer took him young…
evening finds me walking gate to gate to door – checking ties and bolts closing porcupine from greens and genet from fowl. there is no sound but my breath and the crunch of dry leaves underfoot, sometimes goats quick chewing on hay. i don’t remember not loving here – even before i came. even before…
we summoned the change wind and it came like a slow salt beast, barnacle-skinned we summoned the change wind shaping our siren prayers – luminous, winged until our skin remembered the taste of rain we summoned the change wind and it came. A triolet for the Day 12 Napowrimo prompt to be found here…
and of course there had been flowers passed between them – fretful fingers plucking at language unlearned, accidentally unsaying the unspoken.
like a cup of water into sand i have poured myself – tasting the dry dust scrape of the thirst of this place. words cannot shape this thick tongued wind into longing when we don’t yet know we are lost. there is a river that runs sweet water to the ocean along the shore…
turtle dove calls down the evening from the fast shadowing trees in words soft round as a tongue-held raspberry, sweet in the mouth as a prayer of thanks for sun-warmed days and bare-armed dresses with deep pockets full of small ripe peppers and tangy greens plantain, chard and dandelion that taste of old words…