How my heart cringes on this mountain carcass – mounded bones stripped bare. Flayed flanks decay into ceaseless city striving. Betrayed and battered, you sprawl exposed, miserable, dull with hunger. But I sense something here, yearning at the fringes. Something broods at the frayed edges of this wasteland. Something determined, stubborn, more powerful and pervasive…Read more Painting A Prayer for Haiti (& a poem)
Poetry
Hope
A bird sings in deep December; its persistent serenade coaxes morning into dark. What memories of summer nectar fill its trilling head? What longing for lilting spring breeze floods its swelling chest? Here, where heavy, settling layers weight our hearts in sleep, a singular bird refuses to notice, to succumb. It rises before dawn and…Read more Hope
Footprints in Snow
footprints in snow where none passed before are
Held
I am battered, a bereft leaf loosed in murky mayhem, kicked up by frenzied heels Of moon and wind. No mooring remains in this, last corkscrew hour before dawn. I am a burnished shadow, a swirling swan song to inky nihility. Falling. Suddenly! Madness slivered, snagged in the hem of earth’s evergreen garment, quivering on the…Read more Held
Footprints of the Unseen
When fire flings its last defiant spark and torrents of leaves crackle with laughter, I wonder if you are dancing on this flaming air? Here, on this hillside of memories, where dreams are laid to rest like carpets of gleaming leaves draped over stones. I am untethered, adrift, lured to the last place you touched. You were…Read more Footprints of the Unseen
Sojourn
Something autumn seeps among these grasses. Rooted, fettered - bodily, as through me treads the sky. Pressed to this leaden veil, geese consume me there, suspended in their hollow, longing call. Oh, ponderous song! Where the way through? Take flight! if I could, neither north nor south -
All This Falling
In weakness cling to brittle bones. Blaze, molten orange on leaden sky. Kiss the sun one last time, summer’s fire leaks from your veins. Pulse thin and aching, cast yourself into this fall, all this falling. No loud dispute, no furtive begging, can postpone this fall. Like a shooting star, exploit this drift to set…Read more All This Falling
Song of Us
Warm scent of thriving green veiled in creeping grays of dusk; inky washes fade in sweep of vastness - yet touching me, touching you. Vast the intertwining of two journeys into one wandering of this forest of shadowed trails. You and I rambling to ruins hidden on a mountain, crumbling in the clash of yesterday…Read more Song of Us
September Winds
Like yellow edges of purple sky, through the years we intertwine, defy, ever-widening, roiling sky as long as we can side-by-side. Until leaves like portents sigh... Amber swirling through the green, we cling to fading songs of being, face-to-face with sinking sun, still side-by-side. Here, in these wistful fields of September wind, it is you…Read more September Winds
Open Road
Opportunity curves gray beyond where eye can see, cleaves fields and hills, leaps into hazy purple clouds far far away. Red tractor shimmers in fading sun, what matters most blazes into sharp relief. Green stalks grow like dreams, with only an expanse of blue to touch. Spiral bales keep watch over those passing through. There are…Read more Open Road
Colleen Briggs Images & Writing 