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

Beached

 

I don’t like feeling

like I am a shadow of myself

standing just outside the light

in the doorway.

 

But I do,

looking in at the room,

at the made bed

with too much light

falling on it now.

 

I prefer the storm against the pane,

the wind breathing

through the hollow

places ‘neath the roof’s shingles

when it’s too dark outside to see the surf

but loud enough to know it’s there.

 

All that’s over now—

the salt washed from my skin

in the last enshrouding rain.

 

My shadow’s stuck. A ghost hovering

with no reverse

and the forward light stings

like sand whipping up

the cold November coast.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

For What’s Going On?  Rain