I do not fear the earth I tread
Beneath these darkened skies
My quest  is to walk in honesty
Escaping deciet and lies
Each day I am reminded
By this challenge of mine
It's like scaling the highest mountain
That man will ever climb

Delicately pink hearts gently unfurl
From nests of lively minds;
There is nothing weak about Southern women
We are supposed to wear ugly dresses,
Enamel bugs,
French scarves that wrap around and
Tie us all together from the inside out
Football and sassy new haircuts might not make faces look younger,
But they can lift spirits
And just because you spend all day advising others
Of their secret trials
Doesn't mean that you can hold your family in a cage,
Golden and happy though you may want things to be.
Remember that if you feel new, an outsider,
Your personal tragedies seeming too much to bear,
You will always find comfort in laughter
Especially if laughter through tears is your favorite emotion.
You might not pick up boys or money,
But friendship steeps in small salons
Like sweet tea.
Prickly sarcasm and pessimism aren't always the hallmarks
Of a heart devoid of caring,
It's just a natural response after two deadbeat husbands and
Three ungrateful children; somewhere in all of it is a promise
Of hope.
And even in a barren womb new life is discovered,
And even in death joy is found,
And even through pain,
Sisterhood blooms,
Delicate steel petals enveloping grieving hearts.

We have an Irish kind of love
Her and I
Myself and herself
Old and young
Young and old
But which is which
Sometimes
I know.............

We have an Irish kind of love
In how we talk
In riddle and rhyme
Singing and crying
At the same time
Sometimes
I know.....................

We have an Irish kind of love
When we walk
The hills of our county
Herself does be scolding me
For not keeping up
What can I do
So busy watching
Watching my step
And the heathers blue

We have an Irish kind of love
Forged in an ancient ring
But of stone, not gold
Ageless and timed
She sooths me
And my troubled mind
For she is as new as the dawn
But as wise as sea

We have an Irish kind of love
Herself, and me.

Waves roll in and out and
I drift on the tide,
A stirring corpse that has been
Exhausted by your love.
You kiss and touch and care,
Yet all the while a fortress is growing around your
Heart,
To keep me safe from secrets that can't be shared
To anyone,
Lest the spider-web strings
Of relationships
Should tear.
I am bird in a golden cage,
Whose bars are plenty
Far enough apart to let me
Slip through,
Yet I am content to sing
In my self-enforced captivity
So That our kingdom can become a fairytale.
Yet I have tumbled from my perch and
Landed in the real world,
Slumping on ***** sidewalks and in cluttered homes.
What do I have to do to keep myself
From blowing away on the wind
While you turn to a zombie in front of a screen
Covered in games full of fantasy and giants?
I am lost, wandering in a maze of confusion and first love,
And you are not there to save me.

My heart curdles, blackened
By cruel whispers. I try to be me, but
I clipped my wings years ago;
No hope of vibrant feathers
Re-emerging from raw and bloodied skin.
But you! My fluttering hope, how I
Wish
I could keep you in a cage of
Tarnished silver in my chest,
Your gossamer wings pinned to my
Struggling heart.

I open my ribs, cold air breathing on
My gasping lungs, feeble heart
And I give you back your rainbow feathers
For without them you pine and crumble.
Wrench open the delicate silver gate
And be free, your healed wings yanking
Ribbons of red from my love.

Kiss each autumnal day;
Savor it.
Feel it's cold raw breath on your chapped lips,
It's windy embrace tangling your hair and
Twining around your fingers,
Begging you to stay and twirl and dance
In a field of dying grass;
Taste it, like ginger and peppermint tea
Left sitting on the edge of the worn wooden steps
Overnight, gathering the taste of frost and moist earth
And the peculiar scent of red-yellow leaves
With their brown edges rotting away into nothing;
Sense it, like the geese and the blackbirds
Just know to be carried away to warmer air,
Like the small animals just know that it's time
To stay deep underground, buried beneath the
Soft white blankets of snow;
See it in the skeleton branches and
Damp yellowish grass and iron grey clouds,
Watch the trees drop their leaves
And the crows sit like silhouettes in the tops of the oaks;
Hear it in the soft breezes and cold, whistling winds and
Dry, rustling grass and shrill birds, trying to find warmth;
And taste and smell and feel and hear and sense and savor
The grey-silver rain that drops from the heavy-bellied,
Purple bruised clouds and breaks against your chilled skin
And dews in sparkling diamonds on your eyelashes
And slips between trembling lips and
Runs in streams and rivulets down your spine and into the
Hollow of your neck and across your wrists and in
Little waterfalls from your fingers and chin and nose
As it washes away the stains and scars of life
And rinses your mind clear and focused and
You open your eyes and through the
Blurry sheets of rain, the street lights are dimmed and
The ground glistens and the only sound is the
Drumming of raindrops and the
Thrumming of life in your soul.

Silence.
Silence - raw, serene,
Loud silence that
Crushes eardrums and fingertips,
Sinking into creases in dry, cracked skin,
Collecting like silver-black rain
In drops on red lips, ebony eyelashes.
Silence - green and young,
Fresh and completed,
Bending around waists and ankles
Swishing smoothly through gold-brown hair
The color of ripe wheat waving mutely in a
Prairie breeze.
Silence - huge and dark,
Clinging like shadows to necks and ribs,
Tying the moon hand and foot
So her pale lips won't move,
Stillness reigning in the hearts of the maidens,
Corners hiding hushed scurryings
Of the night.
Silence - weird, wonderful
Creating fields of green rivers that
Noiselessly laugh, bubble quickly off to Dreamland
Leaving a world of weighted mirrors
That are filled with God's reflection,
Whispering words I cannot hear in
A perfect world of
Silence.