http://creativewriting.tribe.net/thread/ca64fc18-6232-4254-aee7-cc096cc905e0?format=rss Tribe.net. Local Connections http://CreativeWriting.tribe.net/thread/ca64fc18-6232-4254-aee7-cc096cc905e0#b90645c8-886d-4d90-9b50-fa70502efcc2 *Pansies A deer broke through the border bushes of my garden at dawn and made breakfast of my pansies. Before I scared her off banging on a pot, she stared me down and I saw my soul in her frightened, haunted eyes— pleading for a pardon— a reprieve from execution— for understanding—to be left her dignity. It was a reflection in forest ponds black as onyx, clear and still as vanquished steel, I saw an identical twin from a parallel universe where my life could have been, riding away on a unicycle— a fast-peddling clown in oversized shoes, an obsolete circus act from a childhood memory, faded like the sun-blanched wallpaper of my sitting room where you enter stealthily through the unlocked door to the garden and cross the floor with noiseless steps, the clicking heartbeat of the old clock resting on the mantel next to the granite bust of my hero Dostoevsky is the only sound to stir the room where I snooze in a chair after waiting up for you. You drop a feather kiss on my forehead and like the heat of a house fire I feel approaching before I see the swirls of Cimmerian clouds curl around me, come to consume me, I know you are there. Looming above me like a hummingbird suspended from invisible threads ready to make a succulent meal of garden nectar you appear an apparitional vision of a dream and I whisper, “Are you real?” In answer, you lead me to bed, our clothes are shed like molting skin, our sweat stains the sheets ripped from the mattress, our legs and arms entangle in a helicoid pretzel, the chemical fountains of our loins surge in concert, a rush of botanical fluids burst from pistil glands; you kiss my throat and sigh. In the kitchen, I make us tea and blot your scratches with cognac-- you hold an ice cube to my swollen, bitten lip and say you’re sorry. “Don’t leave me again—I will die without you!” I want to plead like the mirrored eyes of the deer that held me in its ephemeral stare that morning. But you won’t hear because you’ve already gone, vanished out the back way while I slept, imperceptibly as the morning mist from my garden, leaving me only your marshy seed, still inside me. Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:31:34 GMT http://CreativeWriting.tribe.net/thread/ca64fc18-6232-4254-aee7-cc096cc905e0#b90645c8-886d-4d90-9b50-fa70502efcc2 Celestia 2009-06-19T22:31:34Z http://CreativeWriting.tribe.net/thread/ca64fc18-6232-4254-aee7-cc096cc905e0#62ebe052-c0dd-4d21-8b5f-e9c85bce11e2 nice images, thanks for sharing Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:21:56 GMT http://CreativeWriting.tribe.net/thread/ca64fc18-6232-4254-aee7-cc096cc905e0#62ebe052-c0dd-4d21-8b5f-e9c85bce11e2 Jon 2009-06-13T03:21:56Z http://CreativeWriting.tribe.net/thread/ca64fc18-6232-4254-aee7-cc096cc905e0#491a10b5-ee4d-4ff4-8cdf-1038c7ecab45 Here is something of mine: *Firewood Gathering firewood in the field behind the house twigs blackened and stiff as charred matchsticks grasped in chubby mittens the crows scold, scatter brightly, fiercely, deathly, louder than their raucous laughter sharper than eyes that burn from heatless light the children’s boots punch holes through a plaster-meringue floor tinged Arctic-blue with cold as Grandma’s fist hits hard into bundled dough for bread Grandpa cracking walnuts at the kitchen table swallowed in a lumpy sweater of ash-tone the collected sticks crumbling hot in the woodstove Careful, meticulous, they pick out the shattered fragments of shell scarring the pock-marked face of an ancient, splintered bowl, a relic from another day. He conducts an orchestra of fingers that move and glide through air like silent violins that fear the night. Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:13:18 GMT http://CreativeWriting.tribe.net/thread/ca64fc18-6232-4254-aee7-cc096cc905e0#491a10b5-ee4d-4ff4-8cdf-1038c7ecab45 Celestia 2009-06-12T17:13:18Z