#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.
#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
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
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?
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.