Charioscura: Dreamtime Women Captured in Poems

A Stoop is Close to a Fall

I

She was never his hawk

None but her own

And preyed upon herself

With talons shredding

No soft hands or arms

but wings spreading

in down swirling push

could not pull her free

To bend the air

Under her and bear

The weight of death away

To someday when her talons

Were busy with other prey

II

It was the words that made her stay

Words have spaces

leaving ragged canyons

between sounds

Her fury was not enough

To carry her over

Into the next headlong dive

Wings drawn back

She fell not flew

And struck the world

With such a force

As made trees strain and shiver

III

none could bury her

Just let her rise again

 she sees  sharp

From the center bright skies

Noting every movement precisely

The rabbit under sagebrush

Quivering ever so slightly.

Her Dark Furnishings

On a naked hill

Above a shamble of bone built huts

She plays at chores

in a well-lit palace

open to the dim world

rearranging her dark-polished furnishings

in patterns of arabesque logic

Everyone looks up from

mud scrabbled ruts

into the bright vision of order

“Oooh, coffee table tea party

on the veranda my dear

Now that’s the way to live!”

A Woman of the River Ocean

I am feeling with delicate fingers

for a part of me I never lost

among the eel grass

in the fine white sand

at the bottom of the river ocean

raising dusty billows

in bright airy water

 a moon-luminous woman,

about 40 years old

 black hair shining

transpiring her life

a doll dressed in red

on a shelf

Maybe a secretary or a nurse

or assistant librarian

now she moves

in a tentative dance

everyone is bustling ’round

she moves about them

without disturbing

the waters

My fingers are searching

for her symbol

her voice.

She is the one who will

speak for me

when I pull her from the weeds

in mind blue waters

and as I ache for breath

She will gasp to life

on the surface

Chiaroscura

Splash of angel light

her face pushed forward

body leaning close

breathing deep magnetic

corruption

in through open nostrils.

The angled spirit congealed

bloody on her pillow

one arm raised flame

against the illusion of

obsidian labyrinth working

Through stretch and fold

distortion spread reflected

over transparencies

pile one on the other until

seeming solid prison

Life