This Month’s Featured Work

I’m vanished to that 

long-gone autumn day, where 

orange leaves trace lines  

from my feet to the bare-branches  

ceiling— 

you could make a forest sing 

our now and our when— 

pristine— 

do you remember  

when we saw the ice melt  

at Blue Ridge 

six months years ago 

the music-box 

in the curio, 

closed for so long, still sings  

if you care to open the lid 

just so; 

I haven’t sung with you in so long— 

immaculate in its unforgetting, 

whole lives preserved with pins and springs— 

those daffodils  

by the road are long–gone too— 

I could never see them enough  

(Does that make me ungrateful?) 

then, I’m un-vanished  

and the dust settles on the surface  

of reality: 
the music-box lid  

locked tight.