Call and Response: 39: Watching

I step up to watch the dancers

Instead I am taken with this

Woman's earthen embroidery

I am the stranger to her right

We lean against the same post

Sashes at hard working waists

Elastic holds our hair back

No one sees us seeing

We are content right here

Call and Response: 39: Tensile

the simple dandelion
the busy spider both
in their common sphere
of garden or verge
spin filaments of silken strands
that catch a breeze
and unsuspecting
stranger

Call and Response: 38: Future Meeting

Where the cracks show we know the natural
petroglyphs of aging. We speak with our silence
and corners rub away to make a smoother
future meeting place.

Call and Response: # 38: Walking Stick

The last time
I saw a walking stick
I was in Umbria
trudging toward a silent
dwindling village

Italian walking sticks
are larger
hardier than this fragile wisp of insect 
reminding me it's time 
to move on

Call and Response: Day 37: Glory Holes

Two head to the edge of tree line

top of the world or at least

New Mexico where it meets

Colorado and the mountains all

have names like "Baldy" and

one ghost town merely timbers now

once housed fourteen saloons

one dance hall, and the red rivers

ran with slivers of gold

The sky was just this blue

The town was called "Midnight"

We edge toward breathlessness

Call and Response: Day 37: As The Days

as the days shorten
imperceptibly cooling
the Earth's axis
oblique and uncertain
tilted
as you turn
away

Call and Response: Day 36: Holding Tight

breath slowly release
shape gently unwinding light
hands let loose grains of sand

Call and Response: Day 36: Counting

I address this morning's letters to you

like counting houses to get back

to where we once lived

with scallop edged, minty envelopes

and leaky pens like decoder rings

raised mid-air in thought, I feed on this

remember physical addresses like counting

neighborhood blocks and scalloped clouds

on the morning's horizon, words

up over the hill unscrabbled promises

envelopes of kisses