Wasted motion

Like neon words in
a small town overhung
with phosphate dust,
yellow and red glints
in the setting sun
leave an iridescent smudge.

A slow down on the way
to more exciting places,
where poverty forges
a harsher edge against a skyline
of glittering high rises;
immaculately manicured
hands dig into pockets of
cybernetic gratification.

Along the road -
past fields of bent backs
whose red-stained fingers
move along the endless rows
of agricultural investment -
plucking picking packing;
something is glimpsed in
the rear view mirror, tailing.

A dark sigh clattering from
an empty grave, love blows
through this heart undisguised
and makes a lonely sound.
Reaching for something
yet undreamed -
a fish trying to justify
why it swims upstream;
ends up half-eaten, pawed over,
washed up on the rocky bank.


© 2002 Melissa Songer

What I left behind

my hands were empty
except for the steering
wheel and I wondered
what I’d left behind

I looked around -
the sky was broader
the road stretched further
the air was brighter

trees full of chirping
winging limb to limb
flitting twig to twig
left me far behind

the wedding of light
and dark upon
shameless grasses
presumed whispers

a feather rested on a wire
tremulous - poised
singing the song of
the bird it left behind


© 2002 Melissa Songer

Bundled within a momentous wish

When I was four
I wanted a new perspective,
so I lay beneath a wagon hitch
to see what it looked like
as it hurtled toward my face.
But the event was blurry at best -
full of blood and screams and panic.
I don’t remember a lot
about the aftermath.

I never was in Kansas, Dorothy,
although life was real and dusty;
golden across its plains.
Wheat heads glinted, full of chaff -
and me sorting, ever sorting
through the precious grains.

Too many nights of strange arms
and strangers’ sighs -
met without hellos,
fled from with no goodbyes.
Daylight brought the drudgery
of dull obligatory rote,
trudging up and down the stairs;
and in between huddled in a corner,
fingering the trigger.

No surprise then
that I should be just where I am.
Step beyond step pointing the direction;
ever searching out a place
beyond the place
where I was.

A hand in my pocket feeling around;
nothing there to satisfy my curiosity -
itself an incessant buzz and occasional ricochet
off the mirror of my blankness.
I had become a cipher,
needing a code book to read
through my indifference.

It was then that I felt the edge of joy
stirring me gently.
I tried to push it away
and sink into my sobriety.
Not so was the soft response
of a burgeoning ecstacy.

I knew I had enveloped the task;
made it an integral part
of what I had nurtured in myself.
The demon of lassitude
and the angel of detachment
swung round in a riotous dance,
their razors wielded -
slicing through my callous of grief.
Layer upon layer fell away,
revealing the tenderest
of flesh.


© 2002 Melissa Songer

There’s no Bodhi Tree in Bartow

A tree waits by the tennis courts
for me to bring the bamboo mat,
sit heavily beneath its oaken-ness,
holding my breath
for the prayed for moment.

How long I wonder.
How many days observing
the wind riffle through the grass seed heads;
watching the slow rise of the heron
from the murky lake - watching
its leisured flight across the evening-stained sky.

How long before the people
who bring their discards to the recycle bins
realize I have been there for several weeks -
unmoving and silent;
attended by a few disciples
who bring me fruit and water.

How long before the local police
ask me to move on,
wait for my explanation,
then Baker Act me
when I stare past them into the
patch of banana trees waving at fishermen
on the other bank -
who wave right back.


© 2002 Melissa Songer

Inventory of another incarnation

Taking a lingering review
of the effects I’ve accumulated;
memory-imbued.
How I gathered them.
How they failed in
their task to bring comfort.
Which should I keep?
Where I’m going,
there is no need for them.
The recollection must suffice;
of bird’s eye maple and blown glass -
golden trinkets
and hand painted ceramics.
Until memory dies, too.

I’ve let people go easily enough.
Prized relationships that
slipped away into their morning
or disappeared through twilight
with words of anger sinking,
sorrowed eyes flickering -
extinguished.
But when I looked inside
I found them,
tucked in pockets and
locked in trunks;
recklessly placed on the edge
of forgetfulness.

Here in the external world,
I held onto things
and let them define me.
Now at long last,
I must open my hands and say -
See, I have nothing after all,
nothing at all;
but you - my beloved.
You who stayed hidden for so long;
who wraps your passion
around me at my will.
Who attends my thought
and steps back
to let me stumble
when I must.

And when I’m laying
in the grime of another descent,
you raise me -
you do.


© 2002 Melissa Songer

Sunflower Muster

Above the southern meadow rises
the brown eye of sacred geometry;
yellow petals fluttering.
The centric emergence
spirals like a snake chasing
its own tail, and in capturing
the prize, savors the devouring.

A boundless motion -
the act and the surrender;
frees density from its
prison of matter;
consumed by radiance -
gathering the refugees
into an embrace of the senses.

Divine will and universal love
bow to the voluptuous
moment of creation.
Conjoined and split apart -
creating and recreating in
an unending dance of evolution
from the eye of the flower.

Being loving itself.
Love being itself.


© 2002 Melissa Songer