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

Horseman I smell your soldered scent on my dark blue v neck sweater. I know you are gone for good. Which boots are right for a walk through the mud? Do I stop at the top of the hill? March on to bottom of the glen?  Where can I sit and feel winsome as a younger me? How I long to stare at a horizon as if you haven’t already galloped through. 

 Not All Sundays Are Created Equal Wake up early to a world renewed. See your children’s teethy smiles, Disneyland on their horizon A photography talk on magic realism on yours. Spend your mistake with a psychic and talk about everyone but yourself. Rinse off in the Pacific, let its cold salt shock you three times through. Sleep unprotected beneath  the sand spattered sun. Sing your afternoon away  with stranger friends. Dine with your complicated family and come home with one author tried and true, and one author brand spanking new. Smash as many hearts as you can stand on the ‘Gram And sit on your back porch as the stars poke through the lies of pooling blue skies, endless. 

  One Poem To Rule Them All I am still learning to sit topless on my back  porch. The sun would ripen my used breasts like two misshapen plums. Chen Chen and Meg already know how to keep their neighbor’s secrets. The boxed wine. The infrequent visits from a daughter.   I am still learning to keep mine. What I really think about hummingbirds, the unspeakable afternoons, swirls of red paint and smoke. Even if, like Sedna, one were to lop off all my fingers, I’d keep my top held down while I ceased to struggle, while I sank. Tell me more about the music of your youth, how it feels  to know no one is coming to get you. Don’t you remember? I said I’m still learning. I hold my palms behind the backs of my ears, catching  whatever reverberates in the wind.