Garden

---------------- you never held my shape,

-------- which remains wild, uncaptured

which if you had looked, you may have glimpsed

-------- me darting from your headlights

---------------- peeking back through the fireweed where

-------- I hold these beautiful parts of me where

---------------- I found them

---------------- in the riotous garden of my body

-------- without you, me,

---------------- perfectly alone

~

naked in the Ivishak

---------------- bathing in alpenglow

-------- anointing my virgin freedom with

------------------------ lavender castile soap with

-------- her song fresh as ice on my tongue

glimpsing eternity between the stars

-------- visiting with bright solitude

disappearing into summer tundra, an endless canopy

-------- of rapturous unearthly cinnamon

~

wrapping my form in the flashing wings of a magpie

---------------- she’s ever a sharp knife darting

-------- across the loose thread

-------- of my wandering course taken

------------------------ to decorate her nest

slipping unseen among the bluffs of the Mississippi

-------- a basking snake on the warm rock

---------------- a watchful ‘possum in the eye of the moon

breathing the sighs of distant fire

---------------- on the shattered crown of Broken Top

-------- where pregnant with freedom, I birthed solitudes

---------------- more exquisite than their fathers:

~

gazing sightlessly still at stains stolen from my unwilled parts

-------- you left me with on that old blanket like

---------------- a warning like

------------------------ hot blooded prison bars

screaming ragged at the innocent startled wilderness

------------------------ spilling my life into a left boot which

------------------------ clung to that dagger like you which then

------------------------ slid from my body like you, then

pulling dark green waters to my breast

-------- until my lungs were washed clean of us

---------------- legs dull scissors for cutting your thoughts

-------- away from mine making tattered paper snowflakes

-------------------------------- to adorn your narrow hallways

~

scrubbing chain grease from my wrist with the vibrant ashes of fall

---------------- where I found a bike lock for my garden gate

-------- where an eternity away from Englewood

-------- I was found briefly me, without you

perpetuating the lesser of two impossibilities,

-------- to sit instead of speak

---------------- to stay and not go

---------------- to beg and never moan

-------- to hide instead of seek

-------- to hold you up forever if that’s

------------------------ the price of these stones

---------------- for

---------------- the wall for

~

sheltering in my garden

-------- tending my bonsai limbs

---------------- fashioning even my scars beautifully and

marveling at how the Brooks Range

---------------- presses the wind from its peaks to dimple the clouds

------------------------ the sun’s own mattress where

---------------- I snuck in a nap sharing her warmth where

-------- you could not touch me