Lament of a Burning Hollow: a poem

 

Lament of a Burning Hollow

The tree that perches in the soil of me
and fondles all my cares
is empty
save one
and I have left it ripening
for you.

Take it, this orb of flesh and feeling,
this fruit of yearning and hope.
Palm it, my years of untouched skin
until you are ready to feed your desire.

If I could, I would wash my hands
of my shame, gather my crazy from
the tendrils of your memory,
each day a pebble rustling.
I would leave this crusted-over
sagging heavy load in the midst
of burning thistles,
all thorns aflame,
leaving roots ready to stretch,
a soil refreshed anew.

Some say desire is a fire
but all I have is the shape of emptiness,
of missing you;
the thread of silence
coils around this heart.
The hole within grows as it clenches;
when I am near you, the ache enlarges
into the hollow shape of your touch.

It is as if you are no longer real;
no one’s life exists until it is shared.
You are no one now.
No one loves me.
No one wants to touch me.
No one fills my heart.

No one fades to a whisper.
No one is in the wind.
No one has seen it
blowing the tears I do not cry.

 

Tansy Julie the Soaring Eagle Paschold

10.14.23

written in Norfolk Library’s Writing Lab, pulling words and ideas from various poems and stories

Just Fishing: a poem

 

Just Fishing

Something fishy this way comes
or he wants it to
standing on the edge of the riverbank,
a new spot he’s found now that
he’s moved away after high school,
feet standing in the tall grass
remembering days of chasing
popcorn frogs and water bugs
by the sandy rim of the lake
when he was knee high to a
grasshopper and too excited to
concentrate on his own fishing line.
Now he straightens his cap and
recasts, reflecting on the bird
quietly watching him from the tree
branch across the water, wondering
if it’s one of the few wandering in
from the south, visitors from the
warm climates who can’t handle
the midwestern winters; an example
of each immigrant species laying
with wings folded and feet clutching
invisible twigs, their backs pressing
against glass shelves in the University’s
new exhibit in the museum, colorful
feathered bellies rounded, facing up
in the case he walked by on the way to
the mounted insects, pointing out
each one he has encountered in his
short two decades here on this planet,
now listening to the water trickle
by against small stones as the fish
he waits to hook create rings on the
small still surface of a pooled outcrop
beside him, and the time, the sun,
this afternoon, for once seems to
almost stand still, as still as the
moment before his pole bends and
his bait yields a bite and his shout
sends the startled bird off flapping,
tree branch waving goodbye, goodbye.

Tansy Julie the Soaring Eagle Paschold