Patty Dickson Pieczka

She inhales the forest
and holds it in, lets
vines curl around

her heart. Musky scents
of log moss and lichen drift
through her hair.

She eats wild thimbleberries
and stains her tongue, reads
the past in faces of stones.

She becomes soft dirt,
shrugs off each footprint
that has moved across

the path of her skin,
learns to shift
with the wind.

She lifts a finch’s feather
and becomes weightless,
floats to the crown

of a hickory and finds
that her hollow bones
can whistle like flutes.

Her voice echoes
through the valley
as a rustle of leaves.

Overcast days sip
the palette of youth
until hair and skin
turn into clouds.
His eyes shine inward

now, glimpse past
the curve of hollow nights
to soft drifts
of colors slipping
in and out of sunlight,

memory to slate,
world to shifting world.
Moments pulse
through his veins,
pulling him further

toward the deeper shadows.
The departed ones return
their calla lilies to him,
holding light and time
in their hands.

How the moon lengthens
and quivers, startles
into a thousand
shattered stars
that slowly swim back

into a crystal ball
as it floats in this
wineglass. Silver liquid
opens its crater-deep
heart to reveal

a silhouette of lovers
beneath the cherrybark oak.
She traces the hollow
of his throat, as though
her fingertips

might discern truth
in his words. The shift
of an eye, a downward
curve of lip raise
a breeze that sways

frost-slender fronds
and wavers the wine.
Shadows lace the moonlight
between leaves to veil
her in darkness.

As his footprints
dust through diamonds,
she reaches toward him
and gathers back
a handful of night.

Snow has whirled its ghosts
all this long winter, chilled
my dreams, drift after drift,

and grieved its ripples
across mirrored pools
of sleep.

The moon’s breath covers the field
with crystal threads that crunch
beneath my boots with each step.

I send a prayer for hardness
to release me, finger to arm,
for ice to crack and the prisms

within its soul to drop
to earth and bloom into
colors only water can bring,

for the voice
of warmth to whisper
into the valley’s opened hand.