Old
Habitual, rote faithfulness
Adherent to rotational, gravitational patterns
Latchkey Love
Learned avoidance, practiced to perfection
Like clockwork, the thrill won’t work
Time, you are becoming
Old

Old
Habitual, rote faithfulness
Adherent to rotational, gravitational patterns
Latchkey Love
Learned avoidance, practiced to perfection
Like clockwork, the thrill won’t work
Time, you are becoming
Old

Sub-zero warmth on planet You
Editing me
One hundred percent chance I’d be puzzled
Morning, noon, and night
Your steady rainfall left me
Adjusting, crash-landing
Unsure now whether I survived
The fiery-attack I thought was your love

I originally came to complain
To cry so silent here that just my Creator could make sense of this outpouring
This graffiti-papered grieving
To tell the sky what it already knows
My disdain for the wafting scent of muscle on the backyard grill next door
My need for mercy for the muscle and might ripped from my chest
To scream to the sky of this guy, who took
And took
And took what I gave readily — easily — from love
And kept, and refused to acknowledge was gifted to him
Yet looming, this anniversary, I can neither complain nor cry
After all
For all the love letters
Eternal
Penned by lovers, that, too, paper and letter the sky
And God gave a garden and set my eyes
That I would see
Gardens of flowers for me

A wind I’ve not heard before
Today
A rush upon the rain
An energy
A constant speaking, the whirring
A struggle to understand
Some language I believe in
And cannot yet decode
Thus, a dread
Faith filled,
I will not prophesy
But beware

What historic shadows do we live with?
What bricked, mortared, and hole-riddled, but still beating heart will we keep saying suffices?
What love? What?
This battered banner
These stars
Ready now, to tell true stories
Able, finally
To let go
To grow


The mountains welcomed me, “You’re back!” and promised me they’d have my back, should some Great water way — or two — recede, retreat, or otherwise act as cowards for too, too long.
Oh, harim, how they cried to me, spoke truth to me, “Here’s Jenny, an ally to thee.” At once the Sun shone once again, as I embraced my Westward friend.
Her shores were rocky, her waters cold. But I, at midpoint, felt less old — and trampled — then. And my ears acquiesced.
For t-w-e-n-t-y years before, life’s fog obscured Jenny’s lore. She sang it then, she sang it now: “Courageous woman, to the path you’ve chosen, the mountains bow.”


This, the covenant
That arrived on the lightning
Of yesternight’s storm

Show them unknowingly
Your daughters and sons
Worry
Neglect
Then expect they’d protect
The value of carefree
The wonder of fun
There is nothing like this
Over the rainbow
Under the Sun
