Now is the time
when earth cracks her skirt like a whip
and sends her dress up in flames
The place where she strips down to her bones
and dances fiercely with the stars
Where instead of bundling up against bitterness
she throws down her ashen cloak
and covers ground with softness
as air-akin as moth.
Where she turns her naked face
to the outer dark
seared by stars and eyes
of owls with sight so keen
no mouse is safe
in its warmest, most secret,
most carefully padded nest
Where all the labor of harvest comes to naught
and death flies on furred wings across
winter steal
to grinning, starry heights
Where she pauses to sing among bare barked trees
that glow brown as dove breasts,
and mauve as dusk,
“It has ended! It has ended!”
Then she rests, mute and hard, seemingly for eternity
before she has to put her shoulder back
to the sun-warmed, moss covered,
millstone of life.
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Published by laledavidson
My novel Blue Woman Burning was published by Emperor Books, an imprint of Red Penguin Books, in the fall of 2021: "In the cold descending breeze of the Altiplano between Chile and Bolivia, Fallon’s narcissistic mother bursts into flames before her family’s eyes. The inexplicable nature of their loss marks each family member in a different way."
Against the Grain, my latest novel, will be released on Earth Day 2022: “Against the Grain combines gorgeous poetry and romance with heart-stopping action, as the daughter of a rich CEO joins forces with a logger’s son to stop a huge lumber company from destroying an ancient redwood forest. The trees themselves become surprisingly powerful characters in this rich, multilayered novel. After reading Against the Grain, you’ll never look at a tree in the same way again,” says Matt Witten, bestselling author of The Necklace.
My book of short stories, Strange Appetites, won the Adirondack Center for Writing People's Choice Award.
I love all that is absurd, odd, and beautiful.
View all posts by laledavidson
Thanks, Chuck!!!
Wonderful imagery