the fox hears the rabbit screaming. it is a terrible thing, twist of a knife, portrait of a throat on fire.

what is it like to be god? to be cinder blooded? to weave dreams into nightmares? be the thing that goes bump in the night?

it is hysteria. it is black roses and ash-burnt lungs. it is beating the wind with raven wings, stirring skies into phantoms and moonlight into tricks. it is crumpled paper in a fire, disintegrating, as if it never was.

June is a blossoming, a testing of freshly wringed wings. July is cottonwood ethereal one minute, thunderstorm electric the next. Things get hazy in August, s   l    o     w like dripping honey. August is a lazy crawl to the end of things, the weight of things, the last gasp of summer air before Earth begins her next trick: falling apart to come back together. August is dewed grass, hydrangeas in heady collapse, respite from rain, a final bloom, monarchs releasing and spreading their tigered wings to the south. August is willow tree wisdom, an understanding of endings and youth, cerulean blues that sprawl into pink and lavender sunsets, nostalgic dusks, then endless stars plunging through the surface of Lake Nokomis. One last trip to the seaside, one last chance for walking barefoot through the woods, splashing through the creek, a silent prayer that we’ve sown and grown and nurtured something worth reaping.!– Your poem content goes here –>

I wonder what it is— the sorbet colors of sunsets, dawn’s warm cheek on her surface, her vastness rocking eternally from tranquility to turbulence

—that brings the ocean to tears constantly; her eyelids, briefly filling with water and salt, rubbed raw with the things

she can no longer carry: a tangle of seaweed, a dead jellyfish, bottles of heartache and soul-stuff she was unwillingly burdened with.

stuck to low tide ribs— the limpet— a little oil, a palm of embers