Talathion... 
Your name is signed
Inked in my blood, across my mind
My pulse, my air and bone and soul
You sing my veins;
You breathe me whole. 
I swear to you my strength and youth
A life of sweet and bitter truth
And every silver hair I earn
Every secret that I learn. 
Upon your altar I have lain
My verse and music, each refrain
My joy and suffering, my art
The close-writ pages of my heart. 
I yield my body, for to bear
Our passion, love — our union's heir
And every work of hand or voice
Every lesson, every choice.
And when at last I fail in breath
I give the hallow of my death
The light of every memory...
And afterward, eternity.
2/26/18

Adlyn was warm in Jack’s arms, the patchwork blankets pulled close around them, the solar lights dwindling as the batteries ran down. Outside the wagon, the wilderness chattered and creaked and moaned with the wind off the mountains, full of nothing and anything; Jack pulled her closer, a talisman against the dark and unknown. Adlyn smiled, settling her lithe form closer; she was still full of wonder at the newness of the love between them, still star-struck by his blue eyes. Having such a dreamboat as her first lover... she often pinched herself to make sure it was real, feeling strange and grown-up... but then she usually spat over her shoulder, fingers crossed, and laughed at herself for her childhood superstitions.
“How did you manage to survive on the streets, ever since you were six?” Jack murmured suddenly, his normally-voracious curiosity on fire for his first love, wanting to know everything about her. He shook his head; having had a nurturing and protected c

The robin's call the only sound
Tugging on the strings of dawn
Spring this year is almost gone
Dandelions all mown down
Mourning dove, heart aching
Calling in the gloaming light
A threnody for fading night
Blue horizon, dawn breaking
Song sparrow's lilting trill
Sweet grass scents the morning dew
Breath of wind that lifts anew
Spring's changes finally still

Growing like a weed, I remember
In childhood.
Now I stand in green grass with winter-pale feet
Dying like a tree returning to earth
By degrees,
Stepping down,
Disembodied, disconnected
From the cycle of living.
Around me: dandelions.
Profuse, ebullient
Is anything so unthinkingly alive
As these?
Children's voices rise and fall
On spring lawns all around me.
I chose barrenness. And here I am, solitary
My seeds to every quarter flown
Fallow, directionless, alone
Seeking sanctuary from the litany of storms
Howling in a springless heart.
I look down, seeking silence. I am
Surrounded by faces turned all together
To the sun.

Rete mirabila
Forest winter-flensed
Stark against
Dusted cirrus glaucous sky
Clotted dark of evergreen
Bitter wind, rheumy eye
Boot bottom mucky meltwater
Sloppy slurry in the gutter
Sullied snow disintegrates
With the rest of my emotional state