waste...

joy, too long delayed,
too long suspended
will sometimes topple
and fall in a direction
we were not intending,
totally away from the plate
we are tentatively grasping,
and onto the floor…
lucy meskill

in a moment...

sugar ants creep the formica, trailing turmeric,
no less than men who creep the face of the moon,
which looks like formica. skulking the windowsill,
an assassin bug; muscular and intense but
missing one leg, he has haunted the bathroom
all winter long, courting lady bugs hiding
in the folds of curtains, which airlifted, now grace
the milk-splotched pulmonaria by the side of the door
that opens onto bluebirds and swallows diving
the newly-plowed soil, hunting for slow bugs
wading out of watery rills that flow into
the mud-filled gully in which a fallen doe lies,
her body, opened by vultures that linger like darkness,
blessing her disarray with the shelter of their wings,
shading her beautiful, quiet face as the flesh,
that her mother bore just for her, feeds the open sky...
lucy meskill

framing...

the octopus, the eye in the water
the lovers, the girl erect in a wooden chair
the crunch the grind, the sand the beach
the g-spot drifting out to sea
cherubim, seraphim
the rush of wings and waves
the grace, deliberate and untied
the slap of the sail, the clap of the wind
the trying, the knowing, and the wanton doing
the undoing, the floating and watching
the pictures the pictures
the delicate the curled and the willing
the bird, the hand, the place where it rests
the book the book
the flipping of the pages
the fingers ageless, unyielding
the full bowl in her hand
riding slipstream momentum
Alice, falling into wonderland…
lucy meskill