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Poems, Paintings, Poetry on Stone, Photographs, Art Sketches

Poems

Leaving Your Hands

There is a hill where we were once

a hill where we are all wanting to go

but I’m still running down the hill

where I last saw you.

Only my breath turned back to see.

A ribbon loosed from my hair

is still falling.

The ocean breaking against my iridescent thighs

is still cool.

The road that is burning is a Star.

My legs are waterfalls pounding out the rhythms

My eyes hold deep the sunbows

in the surprises of April

I was born between three slippery rocks –

There’s my heart loose in the rapids

Screaming a cold breath leaping

Down the river.

Icy are the tears.

Where is the sea my father sang of endlessly?

When I was a girl

I looked up at him

and thought he was the sea.

There is a hill where we were once

a hill where we are all wanting to go.

Earth, in her evening hips

her harvest fields, her lost gold winds

whirling down and down.

The echoes of summer’s words eternal,

the promises, the distances,

the blue-green mountains beyond

We are driving the narrowing road.

The scarlet leaves are leaving me now

Making red wind, rising from

The echoes of word-carved alleys

Voices without a face

Who wrote something darkly

The starless corners

The broken sidewalks around my house

The broken afternoon sun sheer as my own angels

The scarlet leaves whirling away

Autumn leaves becoming birds.

In the flame

My body leaning onto her highways.

There are roads of hills and curves.

Here’s the sharp narrowing turn

I downshift I upshift

Through the windshield

Blind me sun forever, hold me in your shining.

Leaving your hands, leaving your hands,

Running the hills,

My hips are rivers.

Experience a live reading

Three Pieces to a Thought
Cecily Markham

Poetry on Stone

“She casts the stone far…”

One Stone’s Tear

Initiation

Somewhere between sacrificing too little

sacrificing too much

I enter the pool up the stairs

at the top of the mountain where it’s rough

around the edges like a stony lake – and beautiful

I hold the child in my arms

We dip down

bobbing along the barnacled sides pondering

the misty core

You cannot feel the bottom

You can only imagine

You can only wonder

Where you’ll go

When you touch the child in my arms

River. The Wild Man Under

I go down under

ground

Where waterfalls rush

I used to pretend, imagine as a child that

running water –

My bath being drawn in a sunny

bathroom rolling creeks by the house crackling water filling

the kitchen sink for the washing of dinner dishes river

Below the switchback of the

mountain not seeing the river hearing

pulses the water’s breath –

I used to imagine crackling running water was applause coming from somewhere

in the universe, my universe,

and I was entering somewhere.

Descending the mountain path I am a dark steady horse . . .

Now my body is all river

Changing along the way

I join hands in air with my wild man

We dance over the blue surfaces images

I no longer know what’s my thin blue dress what

Is the river

My wild man under he finds me

He becomes the river with me

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Poems

Leaving Your Hands