I Would Live Here In My Mind If I Could If The Earthly World Did Not Always Snatch Me Away With Its Incessant

The snow fell on the earth Drew its blanket over the ground It brought with it the cold bite And I felt it all around

Winter sang its song of sleep As it darkened the skies But who sings for those animals Who never reopen their eyes?

Frost colored my hands Despite the fire in my heart I mourned in my blues and blacks Watching the life depart

I cut off my hair And the great weight of my life Fell away with it

I watch the spider Weaving fresh webbing Because spiders don't Have five day forecasts This spider doesn't know How soon it will rain That all its hard work Will have been in vain

The wolf spider Accepts the advances Of her strongest suitor Knowing as she snatches And savors her final meal Soon her plump body Will feed her children Dozens of her a copy

I watch the spiders My eight legged allies I see them hatch Love them living here Knowing in a year Or much sooner I will Find them delicately Crumpled on the ground Lifeless and so still

My body won't hold me There's too much of me for one, I'm more than just a face or skin Changing, never done.

I am a heart and a mind And the worlds in my head, I wasn't made by hands But sparked from fire instead.

Maybe I am energy Am I a spirit or a soul? So just being physical Is never really being whole.

Arms and legs won't cage me I am not grounded by the land, I know how it feels to fly When all I do is stand.

I never owned you You lived a life beside me Our love was equal

I am sitting at the window The sun is out but it's chilly It's a lazy golden afternoon The neighbor's chickens Have escaped their coop again They're wandering down the street Stopping at bird feeders And pecking at the ground

It occurs to me after minutes Of simply observing the Peculiar way they move their heads That I have no thoughts in my own That I am completely mesmerized By mindlessly fleeing fowl It is a good day for watching And doing nothing else at all

Do moths ever wonder How many versions of themselves Live in the shadows Of their wings?

How many past selves Live in that blackness Cast out like an inky silhouette Or a flattened ghost?

I wonder if snakes Leave their shed skins behind To remind themselves They are forever changed

But I carry my past All the people I have ever been Make room, shadow I will be many more still

One day the wind blew All the leaves down off the trees And they were bare I saw the birds just sitting there Preening their new winter feathers Two sitting on a branch together

Their nests were empty Broken and falling down Sticks and bits all on the ground Babies all long flown away On that branch they said goodbye Now they huddle side by side

I wonder why they stick around When all the others go Maybe they just like the snow Something I will never know I watch them sleeping in that tree A little rest and finally some peace

The red-winged blackbird Clings to the cattail It perches on, Calling out in that Short, piercing chirp

They sway in the Gentle breeze together Like one entity

I wonder how the cattail Feels, if it likes Having talons Wrapped around its stem, To be joined in such a way.

Do not cry for the girl Who never became a woman She is still here Inside me, I am her She was not Replaced by a man She still lives in my body And is so free and light Bathing contently in The sunshine of my mind

Cry for those men and women, All those in between, Who had the strength To live openly Physically, Wonderfully visible, Awake for the first time, Cry for those who's lives Were ended simply for Stepping out of their cages