Warm sunlight nips at my ankles, so I pull my feet up under the sheets. The rays fall along white pressed sheets, growing like a wave along the foot of the bed. There’s a swirl, there, in the light. A cascading wave of dust particles crashing together under the physical dynamics of the universe. Seagulls caught in an undertow. The light cascades until reaching its peak before pulling back. Growing warmer.
Six orange boxes—one, two, three, four, five, six—fall along the wall, echoing the shutters. I suppose I should be asleep, taking what time I have before class to close my eyes, but instead I’m watching autu
I first tried to stymie the creeping loneliness
Of my missing, adventurous
Inhabitant by pretending she was still there
A phantom of a long gone memory
That I could still declare
As my very own unabsentee
I pretended her feathers still ruffled
With a yellow delight
A frightfully bright
Blur that stirred all emotions within me
But I can't anymore
The colors are too muffled
Every day I lose more and more detail of her
First it was her face
Then her lyrics
Now I've even mindfully misplaced
The brand of her favorite birdseed
I can't do much anymore
I try to hold on to her
But it has become a threatening chore
A refusing challe
I grew up in a small town just a few dozen miles from the closest water sourcea slowly shrinking aquifer that squatted underneath the seat of Thompson County, our neighborly border. Fortunately, we hadn't yet been quite as devastated by our annual droughts as those in Oklahoma and Texas. Rumors would occasionally drift in with a tumbleweed traveler about how bad the deep South had dried up into nothing but an old dusty lake bed, but these flashes of news were too few and too far between to be counted on as up to date or even true.
Once, I heard one of my distant cousins, a boy by the name of Harold, was said to have been caug
1. (On Watching)
Wide whites shifting and sailing
Across deep happy blues
Will arch and stretch
To welcome the horizon
There are ripples and waves
Across the water's solid face
Awoken by light carried breezes
Aimless yet searching
Going nowhere
Washed away stones
Small and slender
Will rest and sleep
Among willows' shade
With blue-stained warblers
And passioned robins
Weaving through willows
And following the wind
A whisper to the noon sky
A cry, a shout
This is eternity
2. (On Sleeping)
In a listless windfall
The nomadic winds
Soothing and placid
Traveling my features
Rock me to sleep
3. (On Waking)
Shade blanketi
I sent a letter in the mail today.
I had been working out in the small flower garden I kept and maintained on a weekly basis, allowing a permanent residence under my finely trimmed fingernails for dirt no matter what I tried. Kneeling before the freshly dug earth, I wiped the moist soil from my hands across my pants before allowing my small trowel to drop into a light wicker basket that lie to the side of my legs. I knew I would be going inside soon, so I began to soak in the noon sun and let nature go about its business around me while I, a faithful friend, gazed and admired.
Warm sunlight nips at my ankles, so I pull my feet up under the sheets. The rays fall along white pressed sheets, growing like a wave along the foot of the bed. There’s a swirl, there, in the light. A cascading wave of dust particles crashing together under the physical dynamics of the universe. Seagulls caught in an undertow. The light cascades until reaching its peak before pulling back. Growing warmer.
Six orange boxes—one, two, three, four, five, six—fall along the wall, echoing the shutters. I suppose I should be asleep, taking what time I have before class to close my eyes, but instead I’m watching autu