I feel like my wit should be dry
Instead of my skin. My wallet fat
Instead of my shin. My vision far-reaching
Instead of my toes. (Indeed I often check,
When my feet are smelling, to make sure
That what is running, is my nose.)
I feel there’s no use dwelling
On heels, instead of in villas.
But it’s hard when you need a night
Out, and your feet are like Godzilla’s.

Good night, Sweet William
May flights of Princes sing thee
To thy rest.
There on the barge to Avilion
Sailing over the horizon’s crest
The children of the summers end
Gather in the dampened grass
Where the quality of mercy, like peace
Comes strained through the dust of stars.
Tilters at windmills all. Yeats said it best:
A terrible beauty is born with those who go
Where midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow.

Surely this is not jet lag.
I stare suspiciously at my unpacked bag.
It stares back at me, its one lock-eye steely.
Stupid little carry-on wheely.
Surely this is not middle age.
I wearily turn another page.
Reading at 4am just means I’m nerdy.
And besides, this book is so wordy.
Surely this is not anxiety.
That’s not a condition in which I would be.
Everyone has ailing parents, kids alone,
And I’m big boned, not osteo-prone.
Look at me: successful, happy, fat.
Sleep? It really isn’t all that!

Evening walks in silks and lace
Bridesmaid to her lady Night.
Sulking, no marriageable grace,
Evening walks in silks and lace.
Before and after, never in place
To ascend Dawn’s alter, bathe in light.
Evening walks in silks and lace
Bridesmaid to her lady Night.

O Evening, never merely Eve,
Don’t reach for that bouquet of stars.
They’ll wither at the touch of the Groom. Leave,
O Evening, never merely Eve.
Think of it as a blessed reprieve,
Don’t let her toss you those flowers.
O Evening, never merely Eve
Don’t reach for that bouquet of stars.

(A Serenade is a poem written to/at evening time, traditionally for lovers.
A Triolet is a poetic form consisting of only 8 lines. Within a Triolet, the 1st, 4th, and 7th lines repeat, and the 2nd and 8th lines do as well. The rhyme scheme is simple: ABaAabAB, capital letters representing the repeated lines.)

Another night, another dream
Down in the mines working the seam
It looks like gold but I could be a fool
Working my axe like a writing tool.

Another day, another hope
Letting myself down another rope
What will I send up from the dark?
What letter written on petrified bark?

Another smile, another word
This is my feathered quill, my sword
That scratches my skin, strokes of blood
Staves off the drowning, the bitter flood.

I walked right into it.
The immense waiting sadness
The nipping at the heels panic
The monster on my back
That I carried through the manic
Chaos of letting go. The madness
Of thinking I could leave.
Walk away.
Thinking I would retrieve
A home I’d packed away
Retracing a leaving only
To find no trace left behind
But of sadness indiscriminate.
And so I walked right into it.
Not knowing that once you’ve gone
There’s no place like home.

For a non-autumnal city
The fallings off are phenomenal.
Continents weight the red
Leaves that do not fall here.
Glaciers ride the early
Airs that do not bite.
Magisterial Death strides
Through avenues that do not
Blaze here. Sorrow is the only
Secret pact that this city
Of heat and rain makes
With the drifting down of winter.
Only the flowering of grief
On its roundabout trees,
Falls silent, in riotous flakes.

Yeah, that classic line.
How it comes back, like a suicidal friend
Who needs you to stay up with her
One more time.
And so I walked through those doors
That I had shut behind me
Paced again those floors
That I had measured inside me
Saw the walls, almost bare
That rise on either side me
Breathed the empty spaces where
Shapes of things betide me.
Who is this dreamer now
Who walks beside me?
Was it last night I dreamt when
I shut myself in again?
What shall I do with this friend
Who might not wake if I let her sleep?
In her dream she can show me how
To be in Manderly again.

Much loved in a different land
Where the magic wand is
In a different hand.
Every woman is sometimes Cinderella
And people forget that the savior
Is not really the Charming fella
But the older woman who appears
Miraculously, amidst despair
Creating wonders
Out of thin air.

Before it sank it broke in half.
That’s what gets me every time.
Not the coldness of the winter waters
That are a numbing kindness.
Not the unthinking slaughter
Of workers who never got on boats.
Not the ships that never heard
The calls of distress, but the blindness
That never sees that truths come to us broken.
Before they lie silent on ocean floors
Before they lie, truths are always two-fold.
The one part which we let fall, frozen,
And the one part which we hold.