I miss you

1.29.15

The snow that was supposed to be a burying
is a light thing, already diminished.
Ice in the gutter melts in hard drops.
The sound through the wall wakes me where
I'm sleeping sick in my sister's bed,
and first I think it's a woodpecker.

And then body pain keeps me awake
for a long time.  I remember a dream
in which I hiked up through an orchard
with my mother as it got dark.
I didn't know what fruit, and was barefoot,
which I could feel all the way to my stomach.

It was not because of thorns,
or any sharpness.
Poetry for me is the fight to explain
what I could feel then, and why.
But short months
fly.  I write nothing.

Poem one

1.3.15

Flowers wake me, still drunk,
in the middle of the night.
Dizzy, I smell them in every direction.
Real flowers, not sickly sweet.
On my back, spine, hamstrings,
calves.  Tingling.  It's usually my custom
to tell you about the dream I woke from, a real dream
this time, rich with the kind of detail
I would only ever choose flowers over.
But it's early in the year.  I'm writing
just to write, dreaming to dream.
Later I'll tell you.  Later,
when it means something.