Fortunate is the hour
when you stumbled and fell down into this.

Never stand again.
On your knees remain
where the earth is,

where the fire is ever-ready
and the air ever-clear,
water, and the stones of God.

For the Woods of Error are
the words of the real,
chosen for us as

the color of your soul.
Lie where forgiveness lies,
make love to that.

For there is nothing else
but gratitude, which is what
all your longing was for.

​    -Bruce Moody

if music is the sound of fingertips 
hitting a jug 
in which someone once 
carried water

mother 
what purpose 
in my growing beyond
your dream of my birth?

many times i’ve watched you 
have it, the dream in the garden 
where i emerge:

an old wooden clothespin 
with cornsilk hair

you clip me to your breast then, 
as if to jumpstart it

and after    throw me away 
for a reason i have not yet figured out

mother i was born with a body 
thickly settled, dense 
as a pomegranate

not a fruit steeped in the syrup 
it will taste of

i was already hard 
with the things 
i had selected for myself

inside you i was 
choosing and discarding
without lifting
a finger, i was 

like the girl
in the department 
store, deciding what 
to steal
​
    - Francesca Preston

​​I am dreaming of a house just like this one

but larger and opener to the trees, nighter

than day and higher than noon, and you,

visiting, knocking to get in, hoping for icy

milk or hot tea or whatever it is you like.

For each night is a long drink in a short glass.

A drink of blacksound water, such a rush

and fall of lonesome no form can contain it.

And if it isn’t night yet, though I seem to

recall that it is, then it is not for everyone.

Did you receive my invitation? It is not

for everyone. Please come to my house

lit by leaf light. It’s like a book with bright

pages filled with flocks and glens and groves

and overlooked by Pan, that seductive satyr

in whom the fish is also cooked. A book that

took too long to read but minutes to unread--

that is—to forget. Strange are the pages

thus. Nothing but the hope of company.

I made too much pie in expectation. I was

hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a

nightgown in a real way. Did you receive

my invitation? Written in haste, before

leaf blinked out, before the idea fully formed.

An idea like a storm cloud that does not spill

or arrive but moves silently in a direction.

Like a dark book in a long life with a vague
​
hope in a wood house with an open door.


​    - Brenda Shaughnessy