The translucent wine-colored night wrapped around me
I Sit, veins visible in my legs and laced through
My neck line, along with the twine necklace
bitten beads hang, tiny splintered spheres- a result
Of anxiety and sleeplessness, strapped to school desks
And hazardous buses- rocked like an old dingy in
A metallic sea. And still unable to catch a dream-
Monday morning feels like a cold bath- shocked skin
And a flaccid body thrown into iceberg water
The only refuge- my head stolen from lucidity
Songs of bullfrogs in the coy pond-my garden- an organic
Sanctuary of ripe Texas peaches and red leafed plants
That I cannot name-Tyrannical bamboo stealing the nourishment
Of my limited soil. I call it my own-
But the earth does not belong to me
The ground sings to Terra, just like the bullfrogs and the
Owl and the spinning World-flash of stars and moons
Spinning naturally in synch with the pace of time
A lulling tempo we cannot catch-I cannot find
Not in the textbooks. Not in façade of my schoolhouse.
This wisdom hides in greenery, in labyrinth bushes, in ink
In captured still life. I drink it down-the night-the escape
Untouchable sky-high wonder, just inches away
Still, drowned in Silence- I can’t feel the world sing