A House in Amherst

Never harmed in an attic,

wandering dust pollutes her nostrils.

A bray outside alerts her ears.

A mangled swan has been caught in a tractor.

Her father, the farmer, yells,

"Shit." and she hears his boots thump on the ground.

The seat of the tractor is raised six or seven feet

and he eschewed the step-ladder.

She hears some awkward noise.

Something she cannot discern,

and which she cannot see,

even in her mind's eye.

Her father is grunting,

his sons are hollering from the fields–

She continues her needlework,

more nervous than before.

Inevitably, she pricks herself.

Blood, strong at first,

then small,

drips from an invisible point on her finger.

The noise outside begins to calm.

(there is really nothing to do

about the swan)

And her mother rings the bell for lunch.

She thinks about the thought of food–

She begins to write a poem instead.

Cycles of Dawn

Tired leaden steps on a broken world,

the mist of a morning in a tempestuous whorl.

Preliminaries and procedures bespeak the anxiety

that invades us all, we changelings of the florid earth. 

Thoughts for the Day

A) There are always tears behind ostentation.

B) Even Nietzsche was metaphysical - that is why I never understood the eternal recurrence. I didn't take it seriously enough as a form of spirituality.

C) I am a woman of color.

D) The altered image is never so beautiful as the natural. (Questionable)

E) Nothing is profound.

F) Does anyone have a responsibility to speak truth? What is the role of the noble lie? Yet to even ask this question is to act as if the stakes were so high that what we did with truth actually mattered! People pursue lies with such passion that I don't think anyone with the power to do otherwise should promote its continuation.

G) I love listening to people.