Fledged and Flown

Wall like the back of an oven in the middle of summer

Waiting for the soles of my feet to catch the heat shimmer

Stride like a mirage through the city breaking open

Fold my hands not in prayer but because they will fledge

Catching the thermals of my passing, stirring the air

Until the street is batter and rise, bubbles and ocean

Salt burning the edges of my eyes and sinuses

Screaming over the pulse, shoved upward

Into the sky.

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and with Poets United. Today's gratuitous picture of Merlin is to the right...the temporary reprieve of heat & humidity is over here on the outer rim of Houston and he's back to finding the tile ever so much friendlier to his belly than the pillow. Little does he know today is going to be another episode of Riding in Cars For No Reason...we're trying to get him to be a better car dog...there may be pics of that in upcoming posts. Sorry. Meanwhile, there was more inspiration yesterday to get beyond this ridiculous bout of no writing--we visited a local author fest at one of the hotels near the airport. It was a good example of what kind of good sanctuary writing can provide--nondescript hotel exterior, iron gate, tight parking lot...and then a tucked away, cool banquet room filled with friendly people telling interesting stories. I may have come away with too many of those stories, but I was struck by how many mother/daughter writing pairs there were, how many people write within broadly local settings, how many poets are re-imagining metaphors. I'm grateful for the opportunity to visit with others who do this much more bravely than I do. :) 

-- Chrissa

Asphalt and Time

Sitting close enough to the night that it whines
Just in the mouth of my ear canal;
Starlight streaming through the twilight in the hum
Like oil in the water, soothing ripples
Covering up the restless heat lapping at my arms
Sunburn like streetlights, a felt illumination, memory.
Night will leave its bites to rise among the burn--
My skin swelling and crinkling like the roadbed
Universes and days and hugs have traveled.

Sharing with The Sunday Muse for The Wednesday Muse: Night Sounds. Today was the day I decided to get back on the horse, as it were, with my writing. Merlin and I spent part of the morning out on the back porch (thank you, mid-summer cool front!!!!!) and he's sleeping on the tiles behind me, now. He came with me on this morning's bagel run, proving that he understands the concept of drive-thru pretty well and is a fan of windows through which people hand you food. As am I, I suppose. Here he is, enjoying the morning, belly full of croissant (not a whole one, just a bit of one). Thanks for being patient as I edge back from last week.

-- Chrissa

Meatball

The dragon of the Spaghetti-Bowl Forest
With the ragtop trees, to the northeast of Houston
Where the highways swerve and fly--
Let's call him Meatball, a spicy flame
Hidden among the leaves and trunks, his breath
Inaudible beneath the susurration
Of all the fire-bellied cars. Let's say
Dragons sometimes find a patch of leafy heat,
Warm, bright shadows, and nap.
Meatball has slept three years
Since the waters made a moat around, washed
The city down these highways,
Now, opening one eye to dreams
Receding quiet; Meatball finally wakes up
One restless, cloudy Saturday
Hears the highway groaning,
Cars growling like a row of hungry dragonets
Crying in the nest.
And there's something new
In the forest. A couch beside the road, empty.
One talon pokes at it;
A long slash releases the smell
Of old water, of maybe--people.
There's a couch in the highway wood
With a dragon crouched behind. There are stories
Racing through a fiery nostril
Like cars, like thunderclouds
Lightning in the dragon's neural highways
Where dreams condense like breath.

So this is weirdness and oddness and written while one of the dogs calls for someone to come lay down and keep her company while her arthritis acts up and the clouds clotted from too much heat and a hurricane a state away pile up outside the windows. This particular couch might be perfect for the kinds of the stories that keep all the rest of the swirl and storm quiet, for a moment. Linking with Poets United and The Sunday Muse. 

-- Chrissa

Away from Home

She lies down, underneath the desk, curled around the chair, back to the warmth of the computer, face to the fan. My feet are perched on top of the box--where they shouldn't be, also resting on the warmth of the box. We're within arms-length, easy to check on each for snacks or a soft scratch. And so I'm home and away at once, online and inside myself, writing flitting like dragonflies beside a railroad track. Phrases catch the light despite the rush of what happened everywhere over the past weeks. What might happen next November, next Friday.

She's sleeping quiet. Varda doesn't snore, just whines through running dreams. And I'm wandering further afield because I've turned on the music instead of the current run of podcasts. I'm back in high school, back on the Lake Jackson sidewalks, back on a trip in my grandparents' van, back in the shock of a different music store, looking at a stack of the stuff we didn't get as frequently or easily in Lake Jackson. Briefly, I'm back where bookstores and classrooms seemed like waiting for a ride on those tracks, the one that go somewhere else, through cities and apartments. They carry explosions and ideas.

Those tracks once spared my Dad, carrying a runaway reaction away from him, letting him pass into one of those big coastal plants safely. Or maybe that's just a rumor. Maybe the only thing that ever moves are commodities. We run in our dreams and stuff travels.

Fairy Tale

We are both staring at the horizon;
I feel his gaze drift by; I'm used to the dream-wake
So I glimpse sunset, his face, and then the head
At the edge of twilit skies, where the clouds have faded
Against the bright line. I can feel the wish, gentle as the pulse
Of the wings against the glass beneath my palm.
Soon, I think, I'll have jelly the color of the dark sky,
Of gothic, purple, Halloween eyeshadow.
I have to let the butterfly, go, first.
But something will have to sparkle in that sweet
Dark sky of starlight and myth juice and wonder.
They let us simmer babies' dreams because our eyes,
Our brains, the tips of our fingers
Have weakened, have filled with wool, have roughened.
Babies' dreams are vivid, thick as sunlight in the womb
Where warmth and heartbeat and light are the same.
You can't stew them properly unless you can
See past the vividness, to the glass, to the spoon.
Unless you can press it into the wing molds
When it's still hot.
I don't gather dreams for the old, but I feel his,
The memory of horsehair and glue, the feel of horn,
His fingers smooth on the carving knife,
The darkness and lamplight
Until a unicorn's head or a mule's head or talking
Horse head perched on his table, for the festivals,
For the school, for the church.
He's dreaming of the eyes, bottle glass eyes
Reflecting a twilight the color of the jelly
I've got to boil in the summer wind
Leave this to set on by the window
Where a unicorn will grow, a smooth
Moonlight plaster skin, from old memories and new sensations
The way a butterfly came from a caterpillar
In this self-same glass jar.

Sharing with The Sunday Muse.

-- Chrissa

Day and Dream and Breathe

There is no way to explain the heat

That is breath and force

Slow, humid. Bullying. The way the air 

Ripples over a grill

And you know you're melting 

The atmosphere, there's too much water in it here.

Cool isn't a thing you do

A thing you find

Cool is stasis, the way water holds you

The way you stare down toward the bottom of the pool

Letting your body finally lay in the heaviness

Rigid and almost sinking

Caught between one thing and another

Daydreams hatching feral at twilight

Heat pinching you to keep you awake

Water drifting you over concrete

All the pale concrete

You're like a thought on a heat wave

Your toes pointed, arms submerged

Gasping for inflation

Eyes stinging in the blue

Drifting over the concrete

Sharing with The Sunday Muse for the prompt on things to do to cool off. I'm partial to finding a pool and floating around with a good book, but will settle for a glass of iced tea, a quiet corner, and the book. 

-- Chrissa