2004 - Vol. 1, Issue 2

"On Dystonic Feet into Winter"
(from the healing conference)

if I go as a dancer
out from my long inner trudge

ruffles of petals to flutter
about my feet in ballet slippers
I wear when they turn over
on their own will they glide

if I trail a chiffon shadow
long about my neck front and back
to hold on to

Spirit Hill blanket banking my heart
secret compass trembling the way

if I splay   tight   light
in uncertain directions

bow back from iced reflections
turning away or accosting
is she coming

if I leave perfections
and dream a smudge for protection
can I return in my daughter's rest dress
comforting as fur

find neighbors to sit near in laughter
and grief and the privilege
of their sovereign songs

feel an ancient voice two souls away
seep   real   through the frost
over my ears
remembering my elder center

the one with hands warm
as chestnuts nestled next to coals
whose mate smiles to her
his great northern fire
I annually squat by
steadying me

praying to never
be too balanced to dance

"from Another Long"

24.

When her legs can't read the literature of walk, he lifts and pushes and holds her along. When her speech scrabbles like dropped letters mixed on an illiterate floor, he turns to her

with strewn emotions as to a shattering next chapter he's devoted to helping her discover. When her whole body writes itself into alien alphabets twisting its tongue with torsion drive,

he finds her face, tenders her hair back to an untangled place, and kisses her to a dream.

32.

So    hope    becomes    Wagner's   piano   lashed    to    a    sleigh    of    dreams    drawn    endlessly    by    a    straining    team       of       nags    willful    and    clear    they    pull    her    through    mountainous    depths    of    drifted    reality    to    play    with    the    world    and    the    world    with    her    on    a    much    smaller    scale    of    course.

47.

(Dreaming company . . .)

come visit by my bed
bringing pages you've composed or admire
given in your truest reading voice even
when my lids clamp closed I'll hear

no need to stage it
with performance others
might applaud or prize gestures
my eyes can't open to

your sound close
and individual to cotton me
around and away on
or for a comfort in which I might stay

"FLOE"

this flooding heart
this transport
when we cross
each thaw
upriver

not to slip too close
overstep

you might fly

too near
too loud
lift away

I might drown

enough
to see you brace
to throat our wounds
your constancy
riddles
deep colors
giving you shine

year after year
I miss you
not least all those wars
not knowing of you

next spring
will I see you again

so much ice
so much snow

Poems "from Another Long" (24), (32), (47) first appeared in Settling, Poems by Patricia Ranzoni, Puckerbrush Press, 2000.

"Floe" first appeared in Puckerbrush Review, Summer/Fall 2003.