Dressed in the robes of unending life

    The wolfbane's blue in the last of the light
    wet with head low over red-singed sedum.
    Licorice's silver, filling in for the weak-willed,
    reaching and shining in places forgotten since May.
    Heliotrope resurrected and crazy with fullness --
    the scent of old ladies at prayer. Cathedral bells, too,
    finally just going for it, like the innocent bomber
    on his way to forty virgins and everlasting life.


    Rough Forms

    In the midlight of mourning my grasp
    (after you) feels long gone. Still,
    there is wanting. Much cannot be held or
    celebrated on your ground. I want simple
    horses made plain with early signs of love.
    From ancient mounds the first recognizable
    sorrows might rouse me, in crescents
    of bison horn, or snake, their consorts
    of the hunt still lost, with springtime.
    In perfect chambers a carefully buried gazelle
    shields a signal towards praise--you here,
    or not. I can beseech myself. My heart
    has already been weighed. In Egypt I remember
    the sky, it is supported by posts or held up
    by a god or it rests on walls or it is a cow 
    or it is a half-man whose arms and feet
    touch the earth. And I will remember
    to be satisfied.


    Scission

    Treasures of mountain cherry
    Japanese joinery and dulled bronze
    hinges hold. What licensed collectors
    once peeled. Bark prized and spared
    an untrained mutilation. Mottles
    of gold grow back for more.

    Wrong strippings happen so early.
    Look around. Some hope to cut you
    carefully. Others wind up John Wayne
    Gacy. Or Virginia Woolf who sent out
    sideshoots, then gashed what remained
    of her own thin covering.




    Bio Note
      Z (Susan Zielinski) started reading and writing poems four years ago and lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.


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