Smoke

smoke brings thoughts of her

incense and cigarettes both

reparable trails

Catching up.

Hello all.  I am here, catching up.  My laptop is (yet again) on the fritz and my kids are (yet again) sniffly.  Rather than going on a tirade about the brand, I'll just say I've been writing on (gasp) paper, albeit snot covered.  So, over the next few days, I hope to type out my backlog of poems from the last four days.  As always, thank you.
Catherine

Still Water

people talk about angels

and it makes me wonder

because it seems impossible

that the slow immoving life

after passing could be better

without the joy or sadness

or the growing that marks

the passing of time

those things are absent

but imagine time lazily

licks by as the sun drifts

through the sky

over very still water

imagine being stretched

and under that sun

as warm as you've ever been

like moments and temperature

just don't exist

 and your breathing

even slows to match them

and you're tiny

and your fist balls up

and releases rhythmically

in the only gestures you know

you've been swaddled

your whole life

and rocking slightly

that movement becomes you

you've never been alone

on still water.

Bats on Wind

A bat catches a bit of air with its lightness,
like nothing else around.
It is small and fast, despite its stubbish nozzle.
Its size is like those stress
spots that darken the periphery of my vision.
When it flies into my eyeline,
and between two rows of top-heavy trees,
it is gone before I can turn
or focus my eyes, or maybe it's slipped between
my right and left eye and
the space where their trajectories weave together.
Something so small that
my lazy eyes like short fingernails at an itch can't trace it.
And the less I see the bats,
the less I know to look for their black against blacker.

For the first time in my life...

...I want to write a love poem.

Recipe Books

I need something as I stand before the shelf in the mass market book store.
These tomes are too shiny; they are too new.  Don't even smell like books yet.
On the covers are depictions of new age recipes, each one seems to be sprinkled
with goats' cheese or drizzled with some mottled, red puree. 

These are "cuisine," nothing like we used to make.  I don't see ricotta anywhere,
unless it's been "clarified," a process I've always found mystifying.
I need something, I'm looking for something.  A book that smells
like the basil pressed inadvertently between its pages. And when I turn them,
I need to wipe the flour from my fingertips, or let it mingle inevitably
with the contents of the new bag as I rip the paper.

I need to remember something as I pay for the book and try out the recipes.
I buy all these catalogs of memories, and I flip through them on repeat,
hoping I see one that will stir something in me, one I will buy for good.
And I will rip the pages from there, and stroke them as I eat the product
of their instructions.  It's been too long since I tasted you or touched you,
so my tongue and the pads of my thumbs will be confused and electrified.

Rim Standing

I'm standing on the rim of a drinking glass.
Or possibly it's a canyon, dusty and buckskin.
If I jump down its edge, curling my back
to ease my slide, I may hit icy smooth,
but I may hit boulders, and deep breathing
and bravery won't do.

If it's a glass, will I make that symphonic whine
as I whip around the inside perimeter,
buying me time and slipping easy like sharp needles,
or will I whoosh and gasp and struggle, flushed and flooded.

And if it's an earth shelf rim where I teeter--
ball, heel, ball, heel, ball, heel,
will I be crunched from the bottom up
by rock that will slit my gizzard.