In the Sands

Lilies make marks, desert water
lines for new years

Elegies for phantom brides —
body-swans falling

Loss waxes on as words evade
indelicate exposure

Poppies, bowers, paper wings
each grave’s essence

Seed-songs for the old West
continental driftings

Daylight abstracts unlock lands
spirits’ recollections

Tintern abbeys mistake dawns
for dancing empires

Poets wait long times on turf
before crossing over

Green roads begat great hunger
in darkened circles

Reclaimed rocks, white clouds,
wild mustard chaos

Chalk contracts buffalo nickels
still seasons gleam

Red goddesses in the chimneys
change night shifts

Successive saviors’ paradoxes
crossed their fingers

Zero gravity offered free rides
introduced Icarus

We suppose unrefuted codes
when in mourning

Badger medicine bewitched us
ritual deaths deleted

Divorcing unreality takes time
along the middle way

We live on anyway, derivatives
of common endings

. . . . .

Poet: Susan Powers Bourne
Source: Women.Poets.Colorado
Process: Pick and mix cento