Just me
…………..The Joshua trees
And the Milky Way (no light pollution)
No noise polluting the tramways of my brain
It all runs through me
Sets my nerves to cackling like crows atop birch trees
………………(I loved the birch trees in Maine
………………And the top of Cadillac Mountain
…………………………….. Just me
……………………………………………….The rock
…………………………………………………………………And the wind
………………………………………………………………………………………………….All the Atlantic around me
Cold and brutal and sparkling in the sun speckled between the clouds—a toad hiccupping for a sky)
My heel struggling over cobblestone in Dublin, musicians on Grafton Street
St. Stephen’s Green holds me still
Holds me like you never did
I yearn for the ways in which a place loves me
Understanding what I mean in my silence
I am craving the retreating of the desert
Everything strands of time suspended
………………You have to look harder for the blooming
—really listen for the gurgle and the ripple
………………Like how lately I really have to listen hard to hear my heartbeat
My shoulders two boulders red in the sun
I need the truth of a desert being the last place you’d look for life
And yet here we are existing
…………….(I am a desert now)
…………………………….But you didn’t know the flowers bloom in the spring here too
—pollination happens amongst dust
I am learning how to shed the husk
Of the world and let nature do its
Living—I will live better to see the stars in all their light-absorbing glory
Perhaps the belt of Orion will cinch tight the waist of my worry
I will become one with a memory
Between the laundered sheets of time
Spaces free of concrete suffocating
…………….Plastic bag over the mouth of breathing
Sometimes I feel like I am suffocating within my own body
Oh for the empty
……………The archeological sand ready to petrify my bones
A fossil of my vertebrae
Oh for the desert to empty my lungs—fill the night of me with a moon for its stars
Alise Versella is a pushcart nominated contributing writer for Rebelle Society whose work has been published widely. She is forthcoming in Crack The Spine and The Poeming Pigeon. Her latest poetry collection, When Wolves Become Birds, is out now through Golden Dragonfly Press. You can find her at www.aliseversella.com.
