Leaving Buckhorn Springs

The farmland was an orchestra,
its ochres holding a baritone below
the soft bells of farmhouses,
altos of shadowed hills,
violins grieving the late
afternoon light. When I saw
the horses, glazed over with rain,
the battered old motorcycle parked
beside them, I pulled my car over
and silenced it on the gravel.
The rain and I were diamonds
displacing appetite with mystery.
As the horses turned toward me,
the centuries poured through
their powerful necks and my body
was the drum receiving the pulse
of history. The skin between me
and the world became the rhythm
of the rain keeping time with the sky
and into the music walked
the smallest of the horses. We stood
for many measures considering
each other, his eyes the quarter notes
of my heart’s staccato.  This symphony
of privacy and silence: this wildness
that the fence between us could not divide.
 

Nagoone Berries

The thorn bush holds her secrets
low to the ground.
In the privacy of rain
we kneel together,
heads bent to the berries.
Lush with leaf and hush
our voices settle like fog
among the unspoken
as we stain and bruise ourselves
with fruit. The earth drinks
and drinks until it spills open
and raw like a prayer book saturated
with God’s desire for humanity.
We are a rhythm of choosing, crawling
along the bloated field through
necklaces of vine. The berries fall
wide-eyed into our collecting cup.
You carry that tender burden
of severed fruit home.
You stand over the stove,
cooking sacrifice
down to sugar.