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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Spring Pruning

I am going through the branches
of myself.
Picking off the old fruit.
The leaves that opened at night
and never gathered sun.
The love with eyes that accuses
me in my dreams.
To the ground,
like blue stones!

The twenty years of an occupation
that tasted sour,
off with that branch,
as if it never happened!
All the screaming
I heard in childhood,
break the record,
return the silence
that was a birthright
and I never had.

Give me room to grow.
The sweetness of a soft voice,
the sigh of the bay.
Prune,
snip,
pick,
until I have a soul
that lets in light,
that hears the wind,
that smiles unafraid anymore
of being lost,
of having no one near me.

I am cleaning things up,
keeping only what is true,
unbroken,
cups ready to be filled,
a self amicable,
and saying to the world,
my door is open.

Published inIndex of all Poems