So I followed the scent of digested
buttercups walking the path between trees, scaring
rabbits tasting forget-me-not’s, blue/violet
blotches on the road side. Rabbit and black
scarabs ducked under boards in the weathered fence, when I climbed
plank and wire to hop over, they tailed
bushes and I walked up hills pounding
pasture in tennis shoes, up and up the meadow,
tipping cattails.

Cows still hidden somewhere, in a valley
cupping cud on their tongues, or higher up on the un-pastured
coves of the ridge breathing in feathered
smells of slop coming up from pigs in a barnyard
below, I only wanted to write
poetry about memories and could only
ever remember writing poetry.

I lay back protected by branches
tracing turquoise in an August
sky, a break from tracking
escaped cattle and recycled
buttercups they left behind, though pages I recited in the meadows
quiet solitude kept finding flies on words
written by Kafka and the tree
roots gave birth to fire ants nipping my
bottom.

Beyond this
fiesta was a stone, faced
flat. Stone
bore through pasture like a tongue
pulled out the fat boy’s stomach,
proud of his organic gut.

I never found the cows, resting
still somewhere in a faraway sun. Perhaps a bull
crushed the wire fence and let his sisters step
across. But he was laying
down now like Jesus over a rosary, crossed
wire, buttercups and forget-me-nots.

Hope

I’ve lost my pen.
Now I have no way to fend for
my self, standing in these timid
traps and ghost lands. I have looked,
stared for many years, fairing
wicked winds at this boarded
rose door to find the trick to get in,
licking back the cobwebs around its edges and black
locks. I love myself, and all the frail
pieces allowing the matter their made of to be
brought back into the shadows with its wretched
fallacy. And I love the soul that creeps
in-between (to break apart), the leprous
cracks in pride all to be
washed away in the white tide when I am me again.
Then I will ride on the hammer’s metal,
into the rose door within the tin
casket of cold lies, manipulated, for the man,
I am made of. These petals, like pallid lavender
pieces of the centaur’s breast will
hold me forever, hold me, forever in this picture
perfect place for tears, and for all the long tended
fears of loosing love forever. These fears
and all the years that gave them poison to blind
me will let go into long lengths laced with
withering malice. I will sleep, in deep
comfort, behind the rose door waiting to gather
me up with all my friends in heaven’s
mouth. The mouth that my muse, my melodious
master saw fit to paint with petals and a wooden
door. The lipstick will smother
my heartache from the lies,
lies I’ve had to keep
inside, lies I’ve had to keep
inside though vented in stifled
whimpers, timid quivers from my rose
lips. But the lips will stay wide
open now because my body, my body
is this wooden house with rose
colored boards, framed by lavender and a crisscrossing
copse of weathered white where
now the door has been splintered and the locks
are like a snake’s skin, dead, discarded,
never to worn again.

Keith Munroe
Inspired by Blair Jackson’s drawing “Door #9”