Playground
For me healing needs a swing set
A bit of back and forth, confronting
Wind with a warm cheek and a reckless tendril of hair
Streaming behind me.
A carpenter strung rope on the old oak tree and that won’t hold me
Anymore. Neither will steal links and vinyl at the park, just after sunset.
Mine is the body of the future, a grave
For the girl who used to swing.
At the top of the arc you can see all the way forward
For only a second. In my bed the only view that changes is the shape of my own legs.
If only I could drag my feet on the wood chips a little.
In my heart I go backwards over the bar, infinite.
Faster Than
All time is unstructured if you’re passive enough at resistance.
It’s been 600,000 years since the Yellowstone supervolcano has blown
And I hear it rumbling. Kids outside the middle school on a September afternoon
Are spinning a koosh ball by a single rubber quill.
Maybe it will snap.
Maybe it will revolve.
I grew up in the space the sun will fill in one hundred million years.
All time is structured when you’re at the end of a dog’s leash
But some tasks have the liminal energy of waiting in line at the bank.
I will do this now until I have to do it again.
The valedictories of hello goodbye, thank you and I’m sorry
Guide me to the end of my wits.
A story can be dull but a storyteller is a university.
The dining hall is open all night. The library is quiet in the early mornings.
Checking your schedule online
One click at a time
Will teach you to think deeply about the vibrations of crystal
And the fall of sand.
Pin
Hamlet dances on the head of a pin
Crosses his feet, kicks a little
Tips and wobbles
The edge stabs his toe and
Ophelia kisses the blood.
When the lights go down he says,
“I’m not ready to be more than someone’s son,”
His broken halo throwing shadows.
Bitter alchemy disappears his grief
Further down the steel
Toward
The
Point.
He says, “I need a password to get in,”
And Ophelia says, “it’s not that kind of pin.”
Grey Sparrow Journal 