Adaptation

Once living in blue,
how deep the hand in my head
loved by a hungry sky

would become sharp of edges,

ripped my born wings that
a songbird bound; crawled

crushed flowers placed
in pockets I thought

could weave a crown.

It was that I knew first
having arms of cirrus:

insubstantial and searching
like water feels every

form of inauthenticity
and fills it;

I would bleed when needed
and not wanting to die

have untied each
found fiction to see
its kinked rope.

When once there was
first, forced inattention

like my mother unable to
hug when unwatched

could it be enough
that never like her father
left her broken,

she only left –

and a love that made me
has tried to take me
and save me same

stumbling into what is
familiar, many times

until older, I have felt
long beneath a snow

like a seed dreams of
a tree they will know.





us, mirror

The way of a mind like a seed
on the wind floats up

instead of with the wind
somehow, or people born
wedged in sidewalk cracks

deep away from the sun
know where happiness
resides tumbling

upon its arrival:
in this I feel almost
a lucky misfit.

Even a self divided is
scattered like pages
lost within the house

with no binding.

I see windows in every room
that inform nothing except
where I have arrived from,

and, I, in every room
stitch a binding, day-
in and out, am

surrounded by a puzzle
of words on paper.

But aren’t us the
song? Aren’t us the
dream and

attuned to truth:
the paradox of remaining
genuine when a melody

unfolding.