Anticipation

A strand of agates,
An island, desert,
in a sea of softening asphalt.
I run my fingers through
the beaded rock
like water rushing
through a hand pump.

It belies my preoccupation
Of rock, tree, grass.
A yawp of a crow,
Sooty black against denim blue
(dusty at the horizon),
startles my pseudo reverie.
The heart dances
outside my chest
I push
it back to beating.

I don’t know this tree.
Its leaf is not familiar.
It bothers me,
I don’t know its name.

The serrated edges,
Rough on my fingertips,
Strokes my mind.
I casually rub it against my skin,
wondering if the green of late summer,
Rich in vibrant life,
Will tattoo my epidermis.
The chloroplasts, plant blood,
oozes,
sticky in its morphology.

I need to:

Focus,
Grasp.
Hear,
inside your head.
Will the words band,
in a strand
and jewel the tongue?

A kiss of words
pass the lips,
mouthing my desires,
in this plant morphology.
The nodes of a relationship:
Leaf, root, or branch?
The living organism,
averting my eyes
so I can’t see the answer.

Perhaps this prairie plant,
Native grass,
will roil its seeds
and quit the wind,
as I crush it between my fingers.
Rubbing scents, releasing
Emotions for the future.

A tease of a touch,
A start, a brake,
change of attire,
Under your voice hides the wind.
It startles me. The leaf rips off the branch.
An "x" to mark the spot.


I wished upon a star. It streaked across your skin
on a night in a Kansas summer.
It yielded nothing but a dried mummy of a leaf.
Releasing the heart from the chest,
The rock from the sand,
The seed from the grass.

The west wind drives us
onward,
a sculptured Zephyr,
dedicated to our youth,
consummated in our old age.