women in the mirror

yes, we are amphibious
between earth and the creek
that plunges so deeply
past the roots we feed
with minerals spun
and the miracles won
from these seemingly webbed feet.

yes, we bow to stoop,
to remember our reflection
and dive away from this image
and words bound up in perception
of role and duty
and form and routine
to plunge away to the vacuous unseen
source of light that stems
from evident mystery

and yes, we will re-emerge
from this pinwheeling tidepool
of murky holy water
that pulls us into ourselves
away from ourselves
revealing all we require
so we might surface again
exhaling from our skin
the subtle primordial oxygen
of that purified invisible layer,
fragile and thin as misty silk
of engendering light
from the sleeping silt

underground

As bloodless as a pearl
ground into dust
salting the earth
with an invisible promise
that the gates were never locked-
and that all we sought
grew under these trampled feet
and that under those cataract clouds
immutably blind
to our thirst for rain
(perhaps in disdain of our shapeshifting guile,
of prostrations made
and wages gained
"entirely" in their name)
all the while
their refusal
only forces our hands -
more cracked and brittle
than the earth we till -
deeper into the dirt
we so vacantly,
vagrantly tread
pushing the seeds
sewn so long ago
away from the dusty,
windswept surface
deeper
and deeper still
until
we strike on hidden
jeweled petals
sprouting gems of dew
rusty and wrapped in velvet dirt
a thousand fold more nourishing
than their freely offered fruit.

strange

This is some strange paradise,
that I did not ask to enter,
and that I was not asked to leave,
but that I simply found
on the sole of my foot
engraved like a tattoo
that I dreamt up and forgot of
like the ethers of some lilac evening
from some time long ago.