Our First Place

Pysanky - Ukrainian Easter eggs - photographed in 1981.

Preparing for Easter

I wonder who thought of this to take an egg and blow its guts out

To pass the yolk and white into a bowl discards for morning scramble or cheese omelet

Then with wax and fine brushes decorate with exquisite patience an empty shell

HAIKU Anatomy and Physiology

Each adrenal cell Under my microscope’s eye Holds a universe

-Skye

On Loving a Poet

A poet speaks Imprecisely

Leaves room between words

Your voice so exacting in your desire terrifies her

As if you would pin her meanings to the pages

Turning wonder Into dead butterflies

You love her but cannot fathom her language

You drown in it Reaching for her

Placid on the far shore She throws pages and pages

Written for you Into the wind

-Skye

Photograph: Desolata by Vigano Alessandro Source: Fallowstore

Purgatory

Cloaked in the weight of human shortcomings The regrets you carry with you Are not the currency of the ferry man

Death does not release you from your debts Shuffle along with the masses Through the vast grey nothing You have miles and miles to go.

-Skye

Image: Fish inside a jellyfish Source: Sixpenceee

HAIKU- Ocean Predicament

A fish’s worst dream To be dissolving away In a jellyfish.

-Skye

Bioluminescence by janey-jane on DeviantArt

Source: deviantart.com

Milky Way

Hera

There is an old story of you Concerning one of the many slights Heaped upon you By that husband of yours

Cavorting with the mortals Sowing seeds in the dirt

Proudly he loved those mud children To your face

Once he even pressed one of his Bastards to your breast To feast upon you

You pulled away Your goddess milk spraying across the heavens New rivers of stars tangling in your hair

-Skye

Source: Dinovelvet.

The Three Graces

Long ago the handmaidens of Aphrodite

Grew tired of being virgins Of being consummate Women

And lit out for the dessert

I met them at a festival covered in wrinkles and rainbows Swilling beer Cackling at the universe

And I joined in at once Understanding there was so much more to me.

-Skye

Saturday Afternoon

I would peel you apples just to see fall’s crisp juice color your lips.

You are so far from me

though

that I wield the knife mutilating the fruit

and bury Eve’s sin deep beneath pastry.

Perhaps the smell of it cooling on the window sill will bring you here

and I will yet taste your mouth

and know everything.                  -Skye

The girl cutting apple, 1938, Andre Derain

Seaside Graveyard, Orkney Isle

Long after the flowers died I wait here overlooking the sea

This grave of mine grown over with mosses and salt air I wait here overlooking the sea

The place beside me empty and unbroken No stone no whisper of you just me overlooking the sea waiting here

Waiting for my Sailor To return to me.

Moody seaside graveyard, Orkney Isle, Scotland

April 2024

Photographer: Tartarchuk Nikolay Source: elinka

The Dead Sea

Quicksilver Crystalline Cut with milky sun Salt grows Out of barren Water.

-Skye