how? in the glitter-snow and
iron-ice no warmly
but world-tilt
sun-milk
below arrowhead
stars,
a small simmer
.
how? earthworm snout
starts her plow,
tilling the yarn
of earth with her gut.
sky drip behind the
untils,
until a code robin sings and
.
now o patient seed labor open
. . .thy husk
now in the hunger of animals
eggs unroll into flower
buds
fallingly into almost near-
. . .spring
j. pratt-walter, © 2024
“Chess--I know how to play,
but not how to win.”
-Overheard
at a restaurant
The rules of this chess flew like circling hawks,
landing here and there when invoked
or hovering above, ready to assert themselves
as needed until the game was won.
But the game was for other people,
the pretty ones, the popular, me being
the wallflower shuffling like an abandoned cat
at the margin of the high school dance
throbbing in the gym after a football game,
the slippery eel of self-doubt hooked in my throat.
The playbook for this chess was not in my library.
I suffered outside the flirt game, and even more
for actual romance: prom, his arms encircling my waist,
mine curled around his neck in that longed-for
slow dance, low lights and music pushing, pushing lips
into kisses, the extravagant touching claimed by others
who knew how to win that game.
These days I play solo chess with no rules
but my own. I’m still
that strange wallflower
but I know how to walk alone, I give myself permission
to dance. I plow and
seed my own land,
I mule along outside of
that old game.
The regrets clank on in a black alley inside me
with neither welcome nor map. But maybe that’s me
discovering another way to win.
J. Pratt-Walter (c) 2022
How the trees murmur
like serious doves to their
waning leaves in their leaving…
You must
let go, child. Fly.
Silent as a Sylph the joining breaks,
the umbilical veins from tree to foliage
sever and you can never
turn back.
Does it hurt to land?
Maybe. But perhaps no
more
than it pains us
to grow.
J. Pratt-Walter, © 2021
