Electric Flutter

A harvest of fervent awareness

taps at the glass with eager tendrils.

Releasing her deepest doubts,

she nourishes the future

with abounding possibility.

In the quiet hours of night’s slumber,

a lone electrical pole exposes

herself to the winds of change.

She steps gingerly up and away

from her tidy plot of ground.

With long roots fluttering,

she surfs ever-evolving whims

with the calming assurance

that she’ll carry her identity

into the forward motion of time.

Voices creak like rusty chains,

like floorboards decomposing;

words spiral around her soul.

But sifting through their meaning,

she hears naught but a flutter.

Thus, propelled by the current,

energy emanates from her being

as she comes into her own,

while the wires who were once taut

now wave to a flow of pure notion.

And the whispering dawn applauds

beyond hesitation’s long shadow.

Casting light with a free-will,

balancing the high-wire,

braving joy in the raw.

Jennifer Burnside

A Dog Named Pity

Through an oval frame of ivy

peers a portrait of fierce curiosity.

Trapped to be taunted, his bristles

are ever raised like porcupine quills.

He serves as witness to many a fight

through the transparency of his prison.

And studies the vines as they grow and

curl into symbolic spirals of sorrow.

Braving the rain, his hopes are doused

by the reality of his winter aloneness.

The pads of his paws bake in the sun

on a summer day, as he plays dead.

Balls soar and birds fly freely

on the other side of the stubborn fence.

And no one seems to know that

the dog exists, until one day…

He notices two little gypsies creeping

on their hands and knees along the base

of the great wall. They dig the perfect hole

in which to bury their sparkling treasure.

From a distance the dog shares in their

intrigue and vows to retain their secret.

He calls to them with a series of yips,

and they hear his language of loneliness.

The oval frame of ivy becomes a portal

between two separate worlds, and thus

two little girls form a tight kinship

with a dog named Pity.

Jennifer Burnside

Going Home

He walks out at the break of dawn

to quench the thirst of his chilies in waiting.

The scent of the earth enthralls him as a golden sun

glares the morning dew down to mere vapor.

A foreshadowing of the day’s success to come,

the windows of his comfortable home have steamed up

with the sentiments of hot coffee and fresh tortillas;

he will be grilling his day’s catch of fish by noontime.

The melodic voices of his children sing the day awake

as the little ones play, preparing for school.

His heart aches with love for his family, as he hears the

rhythm of their lives building momentum after night’s dreams.

In the chicken shack, smooth warm eggs posture themselves

beneath the finely plumed hindquarters of mother hens.

His strong callused hands, stained with soil, burrow

in the nests to dislodge a few select ovals of porcelain.

As his gaze scans horizon, silhouettes of sleek horses throw 
shadows across freshly tilled meadows laden with seed.

And the clouds in the sky billow like linens that have dried

fluttering in the breeze after a delicious soak in the river…

Visiting home like this, through the eye of his mind,

has become a painful pattern

that leaves him wanting.

He leans against a tree trunk’s rough bark,

feeling its strength, needing its support,

as he decides

the time has come.

At last, he’s going home.

Jennifer Burnside

You (rough draft)

You are the place between the mind’s eye and the vision that blinks back from the outside.

You are the thin film of tears that smooth sight soft enough to see.

You are the feeling of anticipation that lurches the heart into a dozen directions when voice trebles bass in perfect balance.

You are the reminder that the heart still beats and that the wind breathes stories somewhere distant in the night…in dreams and stars and so close between the lines of two combined palms.

You are the coolest part of any sentence, the warmth of sweet tea, and the shadow of smoke against an evening wall.

You are the best part of life and yet by far the most puzzling, for you represent illusion and reality mixed together like paint in a bucket just before the colors attempt last minute to resist the swirl.

You are ever-present but half-way unattainable.

You are somewhere distant when pressed close to, yet ever the heart’s destination.

You are out there listening to others’ thoughts on the radio while your own play through the safety of insulated headphones that fit the shape of your head only.

You are in presence the sensation of completion and in absence a flicker of longing.

You are singing the sun to rise with your own beaming humor and lowering the moon into a well of despair when the inky black agony of too many memories has you tormented beyond compare.

You are lifting the spirits like nobody’s business whenever you say your name- and even if you didn’t have a name I know you would still call out to yourself, deep in the night.

You are undercover and over the rise of your self-made entity.

You are a shape-shifting wonder ahead of the clock and always on top of the latest news.

You are making things happen and pulling strings; ripping the curtains open to tear the light in, one shred at a time.

You are always knowing when to pull back just before the truth leaks out from your darting eyes; a safe glance in advance of intrusion.

You are always giving reason to love despite the moment.

You are sighing through the cracks of your life and tripping up the rhythm of time even as it ticks on, and on, and then some…

You and the moon in combination remain the prime ingredients of your inexplicable multi-faceted world.

You transform space and gravity one wispy sweet heart-wave at a time.

You soar flighty like a bird, but oh how you wish you could land.

Jennifer Burnside

Warmer (rough draft)

Approaching the intersection chamber,

sound departs at the door frame.

Red warmth sets in;

a few smiles, and then time for tea.

Triangular and leafy,

my sweetly chosen composition

whispers the story

of a haunting; the sentimental sort…

Familiar even in a fresh space,

the wise little birds chirp away.

They swing their wings like rocking chairs,

soothing me cool to retain one shred of thought.

In this fair parlor

whose shades make up for its shadows,

I sip away my sorrows

to the tune of a dreamer.

Fastened to stillness,

but soaring within.

Jennifer Burnside

Turning Point (rough draft)

Love led us here to a place of silence.

Segmented by our own fears,

our split souls cry out,

acutely aware of one another’s absence.

Woeful phrases of spontaneity

provide the upheaval

substantial enough to

awaken autumn’s weary soil.

As we strain to complete the exhausting

process of unscheduled affection,

we create questionable works of art

from our disheveled pasts.

Curdled desire induces cruel

early-evening shrieks of fuming despair,

which take place apart from the voice,

haughty with a biting conviction.

We weave away from the echoes

of long-lost battles, stretching around

the body of respect and strangling

it to death with a vengeance.

Keeping the peace, we maintain

our secret perspectives, although

through subconscious dreams we gaze

from the same set of eyes.

We have carried for centuries our sacred

sentimental charms, and flatten ourselves

beneath a flimsy finish that displays

the varying flaws of contrived forgiveness.

Subtle bruises stain our minds

as we bend the day in two.

Jennifer Burnside

Tornado

There was once a breeze who mistook

his brother windstorm for a tornado.

As the swirling breeze contained himself,

he siphoned his own succulent spite.

With mounting agitation, the windstorm

disconnected from all that was familiar.

He grew unpredictable,

ceasing his graceful dances and

altering his typical patterns, so as to astound

the foolishly assuming brother breeze.

Fury and resentment led to hysterical attack.

The two were at it for days, and

all in their wake were pummeled by

sharp electrical blasts of frenzied static.

His passion fueled by pent-up negativity,

the windstorm retaliated with sheer abandon,

while the breeze hurled doubt as if a dagger,

at the belly of the churning monster.

An intensely magnetic situation was

established by two equally opposing forces.

The line was drawn at the brim of destruction,

and at last windstorm and breeze were united.

This newfangled version of a tornado

injures all who pass through it.

Without mercy, its implosive pressure

will compress your mind until it’s lost for good.

So if on your walk you spy an unruly tornado,

spinning dark with knife securely planted

in each of its two vulnerable backs,

turn around and walk the other way.

For surely, as you can see, its chaos

has nothing to do with you. Yet.

Jennifer Burnside