THE WOMEN gather under the trees.
They bring gifts, food, and chairs.
They are gypsies and queens, oracles, saints,
Jezebels and jesters, healers, sages, and warriors.
And when the circle is complete, the magic begins.
Shyly, with dainty movements, they take turns,
shifting aside their robes to expose
missing limbs and gaping wounds.
The others gather close and peer, heads cocked,
eyes straining, and they chant,
"That is lovely, that is good,"
and the wounds stop weeping,
and they melt into scars,
silvery and light and beautiful.
Then the women lean back and laugh,
and they stretch, sensual and fierce,
like cats in the sun.

Friday, July 13, 2012

The House


The house in my dreams is familiar yet new;
I’ve lived here before, but forgotten some rooms.
There’s always a door that I open to find
some additional floor space.  I pull up a blind
on a garden that reaches way back to a wall
with another door opening into the hall.

I go around softly, discovering rooms:
a study, a workshop with rows of old tools,
a greenhouse, o’er run with a trellis and vines
a bathroom with deeply-welled tubs that are lined
with mossy green marks where the bathers have lain,
and I go around softly, again and again.

It’s a house of surprises, a place without time,
a house full of memories, not all of them mine,
and yet I belong here.  I am the house wife
in this house where I’ve wandered
my whole sleeping life.  
              --Agatha

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