Brine

The ocean crawls up the rock face. Spray
descends
on cold skin
like tears
from the past.

Thoughts fold into matter
wash up on voices
that once poured
from the place
on the hill
where the wind
rattled the ache.

The place with the eyes
that glanced home.
The one that served wine
in pewter chalices
to fill the chasm
that stretched
from heart to head.

Our lips once touched
warm mead
gathered heaven
onto the tongue
while wind
shook windows
to breaking.

© 2011 Joanne Elliott

Sol

The way you draw up water
so that it hovers over the lake
as a thin veil of vapor.

The way your light rests on the dial
that then casts shadows on stone.
Time glimpsed as your passage through sky.

The way your rays reach out
stimulate Earth to greening,
urge tendrils to climb towards your light.

The way your winds awaken atoms
that excite the atmosphere into
swirls of living joy.

The way your fusion generates waves
that streak across space
penetrate Earth, move us.

The way your gravitas pulls us
to you. Prevents us from drifting
into that eternal night.

© 2011 Joanne Elliott

Respire

“A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller betwixt life and death;”
~William Wordsworth

Black suitcase behind ventilator
with gnarling braids of leather fits
inside the shadows just as each
forced breath fits
inside my mind.

Red spider veins cover your face
like the frost that spreads
on the windows. Patterns within
patterns eating up the cool clear
glass.

Green light shimmers.
A candle cleaves to a wine bottle
in a templed corner.
Wax drips. Lava moving
to stillness.

Blue blanket soft
moving up and down
hides sickness in folds.
An ocean unsettled
by wind.

White falls outside.
Cascades like memory.
Lingers and sparkles
in moonlight
then scatters as darkness

fills with another
breath.

© 2004 Joanne Elliott