House of Dreams
1
The clematis unfolds
bruised purple on the porch.
Jazz piano:
beneath the black
and white hammers
of ivory keys,
old wounds crack open.
A flight of feathered notes:
this dead heart
sacrificed on the lawn.
I wash fresh stains
from my fingers
with the garden hose.
2
The evening stretches out
a shadow hand.
I feel my heart
squeezed like an orange
by long, dark fingers.
Somewhere,
the whitethroat
trills its guillotine
of vertical notes.
I flap my hands in the air.
They float there,
white butterflies,
amputated
in sunlight’s
net.
3
The light fails
fast, I hold up
shorn stumps
of flowers
for the night
wind to heal.
The pale magnolia
bleeds into summer:
white petals
melting on the lawn
like snow.
Sparrow sings
an afterlife
built of spring
branches.
4
Pressed between
the pages of my dream:
a lingering scent;
the death of last
year’s delphiniums;
the tall tree
toppled in the yard;
a crab apple flower;
a shard of grass
as brittle
as a bitter tongue
at winter’s
end.
5
A leaf lies down
in a broken
corner
and fills me
with a sudden silence.
I revise
our scrimshaw history
carving fresh tales
in the ivory
of new found bones.
6
A vixen
hunts for my heart.
She digs deep
at midnight
unearthing
the dry teeth
you buried
from my borrowed
head.
Click here to hear Roger read this poem on Anchor.
House of Dreams
rogermoorepoet 