The Firefly's Light

I dream of making daisy chains
in shrouded meadows
bright in my mind.

I count petals and the days of summer
and sing tuneless hymns
in the fields of night.

I try to light like the fireflies,
project a beacon for coming home.

All I do, really, is shine for you
split my stems
fit another one in,
links in a chain of timeless lives.

I whisper to the growing trees,
they are all I see
no forest or glen.

Your eyes are in every one.

Daisy

It is one petal,
white against green
multiplied a hundred times.

It is yellow centers
and quiet love,
the promise of tomorrow
and only now.

It is mid-summer
and cooling nights
and the brush of wind
across my heated face.

It is the word you write
and your voice in song,
temptation's fight
and what belongs.

It is everything in me
that pushes out to change my world.
It is rewriting me,
rewiring me,
remodeling all the aging bits
into streamlined
clean
clear spaces
that can hold just one more day.

Only the Wind

In the quiet of a dawning night
everything stills into this motion of you
plucking my stems
and halving me in quick bites.

You separate pit from flesh.
The newly pink is bitter against your tongue,
the ripened parts are sweetness and juice
down your chin.

And the concave shape that is left,
where you dented and grew inside of me,
is consumed again
and changed again
and remolded so wholly into a newer life.

Without you I will be the wild cherry tree,
brought to season far from selective hands
growing tall with only wind to seduce me.

Pencil Lines

I lay out the stones
on little drawn grids,
faint pencil lines and eraser bits
on cream colored paper.

It almost looks a toy from far away,
maybe marbles
or jacks
but it is a gentle conjure
of new thought.
It is the paving of new roads,
not lining the old
over top of deep ruts and potholes.

It is a question that brings deep truth,
a rainbow strand floating
on newly moved water.

I lay out the stones
on little drawn grids,
say my prayers,
my penance,
redraw the pencil lines
and leave the rest
for tomorrow.