L U M I N A * N O S T R I

  I’d Be A sweet speck in a stove that, without me, is always cold  A heat Brave Prometheus couldn’t help but steal. A secret dear Vesta and her attendants could  keep.  A warmth my beloveds could come  feel. A trapdoor for stuck energy to go free. Marked by that mutually intelligible  scent.  Destruction to every material illusion. The birth mother to an orphaned Dionysian phoenix. Fire, because my mortal bones  know what it is to burn. 

 A Poem for Mother Earth Poem for Mother Earth I want to be a mother like Earth. Have a gravitational pull that’s constant,  but also guilt and manipulation free.  I want to shower my creations with abundance and beauty,  but also gift them  the responsibility of stewardship.  I want to embody  all my strength and all my fragility  in every relationship I encounter.  I want to be the heat  from which intention burns, but also where icy fear and cold doubt are dissolved.  Make me a mother like earth, who values variety, imperfection, difference. Who calls each of her children by their real name. Reminds them  they are known,  they belong.

 Picking at Bird Bones In my effort to release my poem's stitch,  I find myself, three articles deep, in the biology of birds. Rather than my compacted stanza,  it's my temples which receive a massage.    Who knew only the most important  remiges feathers (and a couple at the tail)  are ligamented to the bone;   that all the other plumes bloom from what we might call  goose bumps;  fuse from one form into another  all with names that sound like pirates to me... Or that like pirates' long hair, feathers are considered dead structures. Turns out nature's seasons are a barbershop,  the bird's skin a strange kind of sheer.   My other poem still suffers from it's Charlie Horse,  "sinews and pupilla" doesn't have the right ring Yet, I've learned things, and my imagination's shifting...  So there's that. There's always that.