Boating in Winter - Gregg Mosson
I wore sadness like a raincoat,
fell through hills, pursued
my moods in clouds, scaled
dizzying steeples.
I enlisted a pontoon
to wander at sea . . .
ten years marooned—
waves crumple ice.
A Flood - Ryan Donnelly
When this is over
I might shock you with
the things I've done
or the people I've known
pillows I've warmed necks
I've scratched to keep from starving.
I could show you photo albums
littered with a mess of over-exposed
faces, bleach skinned foreheads
above red eyes, center calibrated eyes.
I count them – two of every kind, 2 x 2,
spilling an Arc-load
into the flooded gutter.
When the sky turns white
I'll think of you and all of you—
the things you don't know,
the me you don't touch.
Here's new skin. Here's sweat.
The bones we count together
don't become us, but they keep us
up on two feet, lift
our heads from toilets
on Sunday mornings,
a mammal's victory
over the rainy weekend.
Authority - Gregg Mosson
Because there was a window
with a sign hung declaring
this is not a window; because
at the end of the escape path
at the very edge of the garden
a small sign was wedged
amid fence posts and read:
This is an escape path, we know
where you are going; because
I did not want to forsake the blooming
for the borderless, primeval forest
where no one would think of me;
I turned back, nursed wine with an old friend,
telephoned the person I thought most wonderful
in the world and said, "You are mine.
Own me."