#vss365 #micropoetry THE VISITOR In a dream a woman made of light stood in the soybean field behind my childhood home, watching the stars fall. When I asked her name, she said: Why would I need one?

#vss365 #micropoetry LETTER FROM THE RUBBLE Your sky, a torn silk flag in the evening, crimson with trade winds and spilled wine. I spoke in the tongue of Virgil, and smoke from burning Rome— but you did not listen, being marble.

#poetry #writersoftwitter #WritingCommunity A Deal With God

#vss365 #micropoetry REARVIEW ELEGY Desert night. Ashtray full. Radio cracking like bone. Tonopah getting closer. Somewhere on the road behind me— everything I ever meant.

#vss365 #micropoetry SIN OF OMISSION Miss Pauline told the prayer circle her news both bad and good: her tumour was shaped like a dove. They wept and passed the casserole. The damn thing turned out to be benign, but she said nothing, and still got a casserole every week.

#vss365 #micropoetry MINOR LITURGIES In the old, overgrown chapel open to the sky a snail moves across the altar. There is so much patience in the small things. The saints knew this. We have forgotten.

#vss365 #micropoetry A Room Between Worlds

#vss365 #micropoetry Manentia

#vss365 #micropoetry A Song For Apollo

#vss365 #micropoetry Direction of Travel

#vss365 #micropoetry FUNNY THING I passed your house today. Same curtains. Same wilting plant in the window. I felt nothing— which, oddly enough, felt somehow like betrayal.

#vss365 #micropoetry Sometimes, Somewhere

#vss365 #micropoetry TURNING FIFTY Middle age will have fewer names. Rain will come uninvited. I’ll forget to close the gate, and something wild will enter— not to ruin, just to look around. I won’t mind.

#vss365 THE BROKEN FENCE The white fence I helped mend as a child is silvered now, inlaid with slow moss. A crow arrives. He isn’t afraid. We look at each other almost in remembrance. Then he’s off, into the undergrowth, and I remain— not sure what part of me he carried away.

#horrorprompt INSIDE The #windshield caught the sunset. Not gold, but a warning amber, like swamplight on still water. Then the forest closed in, gloomed, watchful. A shape not quite human, not quite spirit, pressed its handprint onto the glass from outside. Or was it inside?

#vss365 #micropoetry Without Knowing

A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE The river ran quick that day. I remember you laughing as it took your shoe. So I too took off a shoe. Seemed fair. And we sat on the stones, sharing wet feet. The river has forgotten us now. I’ve been back to listen, but it speaks a different language.

#vss365 #micropoetry FIELD CATECHISM Down in Brackettville, Uncle Jeb prays by placing his right palm on the hot back of the ox. Seen it myself, more than once. Nothing else, just that: Jeb’s hand, the flesh, the sun, and the waiting.

#vss365 PASSING THAT PLACE One winter morning, 40 years ago or more, I saw a girl in a red shawl waiting under the gorse hedge. I never knew her name, & never saw her again. But I think of her absence when I pass that place. Some loves remain like mist, never quite lifting.

#vss365 #micropoetry This Side of Diminishing