Ichor running through her veins
All blood is pushed aside
Her eyelids shut, her heart on ice
My fate she would decide
Wilted romance, rotting vines
Garden left in thorns
A lonely rose from last years bloom
Bent over in her scorn
New seeds unplanted, sterile lay
Her cold impounds the soil
To blow within a fallow lust
Abandoned there to toil
With one more look, beyond all hope
My vision love impaired
Her verdict guilty, poison laid
—in blindness I despair
(Longwood Gardens: February, 2022)
The Same But Different
Piecing it together
for a second time
the result was not the same
The years had altered
the way each piece fit
a strange familiar game
Instinct overwriting
what memory lost
the picture starts to clear
My past and future
now conjoined
—as moments reappear
(The New Room: March, 2022)