Windswept

 

Photo © 2024 Jennifer Wagner

The bones of my legs feel hollow,

wind tangles my hair,

 

the sun, past noon,

nudges my back

 

as my silhouette makes

a thin sketch limned in the dust.

 

I couldn’t read the room

for the call of too many voices,

 

or absence of one.

That’s why I’m out here

 

with the other nomads

like spent leaves

 

clustered around the edge

looking down into

 

the cold kisses

of the Colorado.

 

My skin, too, is cracking

with time—a horse

 

galloping away

back over my shoulder.

 

I glance at the oil left in my lamp

with a sense that I’m still waiting

 

for the wind to return

my spent voice

 

swallowed up

in the rush of deep black river,

 

to ride its echo back

to that which once was lush, was green.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

The Sunday Whirl

Old Age

 

Piano Lesson by AquaSixio on DeviantArt

I’d forgotten how to play, they said—

my hair like feathers, hands like talons.

But, notes fall out of the very air I breathe.

 

Listen—you can hear plumes, chases in moonlight,

blood on snow, forgotten prairies,

untouched fields, the glorious soaring.

 

By the end, they were pulling Kleenex from the box.

Yes, I’d forgotten.  More than they’ll ever learn.

 

Gray is a color, too.

 

 

© 2023 Jennifer Wagner

 

For this very cool picture prompt at The Sunday Muse.

 

Dedicated to my 93-year-old neighbor, Mary.