Movement/Winter Solstice

Pilot through dark elevation,
air's apertures
found and knitting closed
behind accumluated knowledge.
The sensor a blind intention,
breast-stroking its instinctual way
towards divinity
which can only be hauled in
by the muscles, not the mind, of being.
Some angel dimension
grinding down rock to diamond,
shifting the techtonic plates of irrationality
into a new zone
where a cluster of bodiless feet
chatter along unstable serpentine
and an undiscovered-by-human-lily
wildly blooms.

My Past Has Changed

Spring edged in the back door,
knocked over kitchen table and
the blue telephone in its
rush for childhood's caterwauls.

No more dolls on the bed,
flouncy dresses promising,
insurable satin worth coin.

The green wind is merciless,
it's got hold of the Injured Heart,
shaking out all the marbled
cottontail scabs there:
uncles fathers the fear
of being fat.

Here are the appetites
marching on stumpy legs,
covering themselves in icecream,
earnest as wings, stepping back
into cocoons when confronted.
They are false prophets
whose heavy bodies must be
rolled off the upspringing shoots.

Remember tetherball?
A kind of violent Maypole?
Stuff my past into that sphere,
hit it until the rope breaks
from the pole and the self-
centered ball goes free
all the way across the Grand
Canyon's chasm, released meteor,
harmless in desert air.

Grace Marie Grafton's poems have won first prize in Bellingham Review's annual contest, twice been nominated for a Pushcard Prize and won the Poetic Matrix chapbook contest. Her book, Visiting Sisters, was published by Coracle Books. Poems appear recently in poemeleon.com, The Listening Eye, and edgz.

Email: Grace Marie Grafton

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