You know when it’s getting late in the day and nothing will come and you open and the strangest things come through.  Today is one of those days.  Here is my strange thing.  I think it’s a poem.  It has alliteration and a kind of rhythm to it, and prose poems are very forgiving in terms of rules.  I have no idea what it’s about.  I sort of like that.  It headed off in about 5 different directions and I let it go.

Spectre

The peonies I picked for the kitchen have already fallen apart.  I reached to touch their velvet pink and the petals fell into my hand like pieces ready for a baby’s quilt.  Last night I hung my paintings in this new house.  I purchased new hardware because what I thought I had was in hiding. I could hear the house holding its breath as I hammered the nails into its walls, the red dragon with matt scales and garlic breath tapping her talons on the wood floor, giving suggestions on placement and skew.  Everything is new  here.  I woke to the smell of onion soup when there was none and lost the last vestiges of a dream where I was flying.  Out of the mist which was/was not there rose a vision moving like motion itself, smooth as becalmed water, her pearl teeth gathered from the oysters’ pain, her skirts like a pink sky at morning.  In the desert, this could not happen.  Dreams would bask in the sun as saguaro stood in silent praise of the day.  I have searched everywhere, and still I cannot find you.