On The Platform

This is Wyoming 

The barbed fence undulates into the horizon The long rollers of the deep old sea feathered with grass Dotted with pronghorn and ghosts of buffalo

Capped in bright sky

The great plain The red car zipping Through the simmering tar

The woman almost 50 The woman bright and lively after 70

Talk rolls back and forth

Some thunder

There have always been hard lines Etched in old oceans There has always been wind cutting across the plane Changing everything

 -Skye’s Poem

Saturday Afternoon

I would peel you apples just to see fall’s crisp juice color your lips.

You are so far from me

though

that I wield the knife mutilating the fruit

and bury Eve’s sin deep beneath pastry.

Perhaps the smell of it cooling on the window sill will bring you here

and I will yet taste your mouth

and know everything.                  -Skye

The girl cutting apple, 1938, Andre Derain

Seaside Graveyard, Orkney Isle

Long after the flowers died I wait here overlooking the sea

This grave of mine grown over with mosses and salt air I wait here overlooking the sea

The place beside me empty and unbroken No stone no whisper of you just me overlooking the sea waiting here

Waiting for my Sailor To return to me.

Moody seaside graveyard, Orkney Isle, Scotland

April 2024

House Hunting

We are looking for a house to keep dreaming really

I like tall grass and wildflowers hardly suitable for some respectable old manor nestled up on the hill of old St. Albans town.

Just a little way down out of town? You say

There is this fine old farmstead over looking Champlain

two Acres of fine grassy knolls but alas We are not people who mow

We would need goats to keep the field neat

I like goats you smile

I smile We can milk them and make soap

We are looking for a house to keep You and I

Victorian with turret? I say dreaming really

I’m so in love with you.

-Skye

Ordinary

It’s the common things The row of milk Whole Skim Even Almond

It’s the cart with the Wonky Grumbly wheel

It’s holding hands While hunting   Creamed corn

(Who buys creamed corn anymore, anyways?)

It’s standing in line Watching apples Roll along the belt Knowing with certainty There will be pie.

- Skye 

On Loving a Poet

A poet speaks Imprecisely

Leaves room between words

Your voice so exacting in your desire terrifies her

As if you would pin her meanings to the pages

Turning wonder Into dead butterflies

You love her but cannot fathom her language

You drown in it Reaching for her

Placid on the far shore She throws pages and pages

Written for you Into the wind

-Skye

The Wraith’s Requiem

Thin strips of flayed flesh String the bow.

Time is always conducting us in and out of measure.

The ghost of my own making holds fast to darkness

Though, I let go so long ago

Learning to play for no one with fingers once broken

Beautiful terrible music unleashed into the world for me for me

for you.

-Skye

Requiem by Burak Ulker

Photograph Title: Striptease club, Tokyo, 1951. Photographer:  Werner Bischof

Striptease Club, Tokyo ‘51

Painted faces and smooth skin Lounging among dressing room clutter Channeling palace concubines For the average man

Emerging from feudalism

Tokyo girls All bouncing breasts and Swaying hips Take the stage.

-Skye

Photo Credit: “Eyes as Big as Dinner Plates” Photo series by Riitta Ikonen & Karolyn Hjorth

Jord

Fecund life Comes through me Covers my back and lines my Throat Holding me silent

Tell your tales On the long night ‘round bonfires Wild pagan gestures

Appease The demands of lessor gods Looking down from the great hall

Then press your feet into my ample back I am the Mother I will carry you.

Source: elzamine

Life’s Detritus

Mundane bits of life’s detritus Collected and pressed In a leather-bound book

Bits of butterfly wings Flowers of spring Flowers of high summer A seed or two for good measure

Carefully preserved To revisit later In the twilight When one pulls the bits of one’s Life together Into one last story.

-Skye