caught the world in catatonia.
Dismal clouds cast buckets of rain
that occupy the pavement in waves,
muddy the fields, dampen broken branches,
beat upon the heads of flowers.
The Pacific Northwest indulges in crying spells--
like a lonely widow gazing at a fading photograph
of a mustached man,
then cradles her time-woven body in tears.
From hibernation, I glance from my kitchen table
and witness a crow glide upward
with a morsel of food in its mouth.
It's ebony wings slice wisps of sky
that breathe on the house like a snoring smoker.
One crow rises to melancholy.
I turn inward into my abyss of tangled thread,
yearning to untie the knots,
but my hands get caught as in a Chinese finger trap.
The drizzle deepens the ancient blues within.
Half-gazing at the window, I return from my inner cave
and see a Mason jar full of decaying daffodils,
and a tulip held by a drinking glass,
petals the hue of bruised purple.
In sorrow, the tulip clings to the glass,
tubs its head against the window,
searches for a sun that cloaks its face with a wooly shawl.
