colleenkeefe

here, a curve of stone worried down by sea and then your hand, caressing #poetry #haiku

before quiet hours end, sun will slant through a room dust turned to mote stars #haiku #poetry

sun on wet pavement worms spilled out like question marks in the rising mist #poetry #haiku

in a kitchen past my Smith Corona still sits on the chrome dinette

#haiku #poetry

Since it's Valentine's Day, here's a poem I wrote 33 years ago, when I was 21.

love poem (written ~1990, St. Louis)

Say the thick petals of a rose are falling like an angel, insensate

through the cloudy membrane of a page, falling into the green slate

of water in a glass bowl. And the water's tight-skinned. Somewhere two kids

are folding the pelts of their bodies into each other's hands. Say they're reading by touch

the hieroglyph of the tongue. The petals, too, are clinging, all at one

edge of the bowl. Like the bound sheets of a book blowing open, page by page, the thin sheets of the earth turn,

each rehearsing in its whisper, ‘here there was rock,’ and ‘here there were fish, once’; ‘here an elk was killed by wolves’.

The ground scrawls out its story, and nobody listens. We're too busy leaning

our ears to each other's hearts, teaching ourselves the quick, opening flutter and

the shutting tight of the dark volumes inside our chests. Dust always settles

on what we don't use. And yet we're surprised at what turns up in the ground, the cities, the people

clambering out of the clay into the bright sun and drawn back down. Lovers

come to each other like archaeologists, digging up strange artifacts of the heart

holding them up to the light, amazed, hold them and press them to life.

#poetry

a wild wrecked beauty moonrise over blue dune grass dark murmuring sea

#haiku #poetry

Six Haiku, Almost (Philadelphia, Sunday December 20th 2020)

I walk down into Our forest, the breath of pines Crisp over the snow

Bright sky through dark limbs. My boot heels sink into black. Cold and wet, this world

Lifts up, clean and spare. I live between white and white Greens and blues stripped bare

Until suddenly Three does rush through, hoofs on snow Circling, turning home.

I turn too. My breath Is hot, steaming in the still Blanket of this world.

My boots by the front door, Our house warm as laundered sheets, This home, us, breathing.

#poetry

Here in mid-winter the cold is in everything. Stand close to the fire.

#haiku #poetry

See: the sun rises. Love, when has poetry been for anything else?

#haiku #poetry

Black mug with black tea at night. Walking the dark block under stars turning.

#haiku #poetry