How clean do your words burn

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.~Leonard Cohen


how clean do your words burn
as complete thoughts, real to
real feelings, probable visions,
wood cuts from potatoes

released in the air,
spudded bullets melting
to butter toffee ribboned stream...
sweet essence disappearing,

as soon as rainbow river
turns a corner--away
from steady granite earth

savories kept uppermost
in palate's sensibilities-
the sweetness had to disperse;

among the water lillies,
turtles tend a careful watch
from fallen over log, unmoved

just the steady breathing out
of plants lining the river- soaked banks,
the witness breathing in

the miracles of carbon
dioxide exchanging with oxygen--
toes barely swirling in mud path

finding one's way back
to camp, before the dinner bell;
leaving more time for mud's perils

pearls crop up underfoot..
worn as toe rings, rarely
seen in these parts;

pantomiming prayers
the silence is deafening
we are there


Kate Lamberg
11/23/11