Time in the Full of Empty

 

these are times for vases
I’ll leave vacant
and not cut the roses lilies daffodils
blooming in my garden

 I’ll feed house crickets to the song finch
for this is its molting season
it will sing again … or die
like the crickets
time

once a dove flew against my window
to drop hurt … still breathing
I caged and healed it
watched it orient and fly
watched it taloned by a diving hawk
time

oh,  now is time in the full of empty
when smiles are merely stretch-ed lips
and fog trails from my fingertips
and I wear his slippers

 I shall sit upon my lawn
close to the roses lilies daffodils
and breath the fragrance
of invisible of presence

 

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Qi Baishi

wilderness in women

 

I’m old…
I can tell you this

women need wilderness
…especially when they’re young

for in wilderness they learn
not to trust old maps;
and they swim in icy streams
if bridges are washed down

in wilderness…
they hear honest sounds,
and know when nestlings
rasp for raw sustaining flesh
they hear healthiness…
not the noise of whining

and on the day they die
women raised in wilderness
sing to themselves…remembered
songs to float with them from
this world to the next

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork Balthazar Denner

 

blade sting

we near death are not yet as
pocket lint…soft gray felting
re-mem-brance

instead…
we are crisp ironed  alpine forest
spice thread saffron…and we
blush carnadine to water with
our hands

your conversation in the other room
is noisome to us as mosquito drone

and if we gaze at you as if we
do not comprehend it is because
we do…hear over under ‘round
above and through you

did you know…inside…we laugh
at…do not go gentle…lost the battle
did you know at brink we do not care

for tissue rustle dry cough tearless
we dismiss your presence…and
we know our blade stings  and…how
soon you’ll heal the cut

 

Bonnie Marshall

Art by Elizabeth Opalenik

 

 

as fleets at Samothrace

Nike…feral cat…preen incidental gore
from your wilding night…take residence
upon my morning porch

drop from your prim savage mouth
mangled corpses…lizard rat and wren
rewards…keen killing… savaged

all precisely voided now of gut and eyes
and heart and brain…cat you slipped
to your own  throat their pipe squeal song

and then the goldfinch…gold feather flash
its striped wings flung open… broken
claw clench… headless…voided carcass

I glance and find the trifling skull
socket blinded…still with a feathered cap
tongueless beak  akimbo in the bladed grass

no false sentiment…no…none from me
no foolish judgment of her splendid feat
instead, I’ll laud…as fleets at Samothrace

 

Bonnie Marshall

Painting by Salvador Dali
“Nike, Victory Goddess of Samothrace
Appears in a Tree Bathed in Light,” 1977

in another room

we swim in amniotic warmth
and trampoline her shore;
we taste her sweet and salty,
scent vanilla carrot mint

her soft voicedrift descants
heartdrum… throb whoosh
murmur burble wash…of
our presence in her space

then…pulse and pulse
crown pressure and release
for skinness to be air lit
inner outer brash and thrash

sometimes…
when we step to darkness
when we enter light
comes remembrance…place
comes remembrance…rhythm
comes remembrance…music dance
in another room

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artist: Jamie Wyeth