Gossamer strings
weaving between
emptiness,
the lace
slides
beneath needles
as I stitch air
into beauty.
Gossamer strings
weaving between
emptiness,
the lace
slides
beneath needles
as I stitch air
into beauty.
The scent
wound around the room
burrowed up the nostrils
and drained out eyes.
Set away
from sensitive noses
the lily’s petals have fallen
and still its heavy scent
fills the heated air,
present in death,
like warm memories
of you.
You are a
panther of poesy
lithely elucidating
your erudition,
stalking grandiloquence,
vaulting verbiage in your
versification
until you are
a kitten tangled
in tautology.
It was a moment,
a frozen smile
caught forever.
A photograph
recording you
as I longed for
you to be.
A moment when
happiness pushed
away illness and
illuminated
all our dreams
If you think
the new guy
loves you for you
perhaps it’s just that
he hasn’t noticed yet,
who you really are?
Have you sliced him yet
with those word daggers,
eviscerating his affections,
hacking out his heart,
and bleeding out
years of devotion?
Have you belittled him
in front of family,
friends, and children,
torn him into pieces,
crushed his spirit,
and pushed him to despair?
Not yet?
We’ll give it time.
Eventually
he’ll know you
for the daggers
in your smile.
.
.
.
.
“Where we are, There’s daggers in men’s smiles: the near in blood, The nearer bloody.”
MacBeth II.iii.
When you crunch
into that apple
eyes twinkling,
cheek dimpling.
I am Eve,
and that smile,
glistening with juice,
is paradise
to go.
I hear your distant rumblings.
Your grumblings do not impress.
I can shut the windows
and let your storm pass by.
Something in the air
is singing my name.
.
I can not tell if it
is a melody from yesterday.
.
I hope such harmony
is from tomorrow.
Ghostly calls across the lake
loons declaiming poetry
its harmonic tones drowned
by strident laughter
in the cabin next door
from a less musical loon.
.
On the right of the photo, the two small white dots on the water are the loons.
What I learned about you:
What I learned about us:

Shawn Bird is an author, poet, and educator in the beautiful Shuswap region of British Columbia, Canada. She is a proud member of Rotary.