20 little projects

Deciduous

The trees burn a deep red, like a dying flame

Desperately holding onto a dry branch.

I stand beneath them to feel their heat.

The wind smells like a campfire, and something sweeter,

I feel the chill of autumn in my bones and the

Warm glow of the leaves on my skin,

Look up and see only fire!

It is as red and desperately alive as the sound of my heartbeat.

“Everything is a matter of life and death.”

Richard Wilbur is observing me under this Burning Bush,

Urging me on, hoping me towards the window.

I watch the dying leaves flutter down around me, ready for decay

Burned most bright at close of day.

Sometimes I wake up with poetry stuck in my head,

Old poems, throw-backs to years spent memorizing

Words so cold I always had a cough:

There’s a

Certain

Slant

Of Light

It may as well have been my sun.

The sharp branches of shame appear as

Leaves fall from the tree,

Beautiful as broken glass.

I decide that I too am a tree,

I dig my roots into the soil and burst into flame.

Maddie becomes the person I almost was

I watch her turn to smoke

And wonder if she will leave the smell of firewood

On their skin

Broken butterflies lurch across the ground,

Leading to a pine-tree covered mountain that remains eternally green:

There has never been a green as green as this!

“Ga som kitten kring het grot”

“You want to be loved,” the porridge says to the cat

The evergreens watch as I burn a deep red,

Beautiful for a moment.