The Innisfree Poetry Journal
www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Laura M. Dixon


YES NO YES
 
This dust

must have been something

once.  A man,

a cactus, a horse.

 
Ground

shadowed by clouds.

What's hidden

stays hidden.

 
It will be a cold rain.

Manifest, certain, soaking.

Thunder.

Dust into mud.

 
 
FIRST VERSES

 
The earliest written documents

were lists.  Dean says we can't know

if they're bills of sale or poems,

which begs the question.

My grocery list reads like verse:

eggs, spinach, juice.  But so does the sign

at the end of your street: BLIND

CHILD AT PLAY.  Beautiful and useful.

I always feared we would have

to choose.  Sunrise and sunset

tell lovely lies, which is why

their flat-Earth logic still shines

across poetry's sky.  But don't we write

lines to seek new light, to clear the air?

To find soft, fertile dirt and plant

there.  To order the chaos

in rows.  To blink.  To think or stop

thinking.  To cope with how thoughts run:

When the body's tired, the mind decides

to rearrange the furniture and hum.




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