How They Circle

how they circle


Maxfield Parrish sets a girl on a swing
preserves in stunning gold & crème
a honey a thickening a pouring
pooling of light become
this tender flesh

she purses her lips
wrens hopping after flakes
she picks & flicks from a petit pain
au chocolate her skin freckled with too many
days ignoring the cries of gulls
& the salt of glass
tumbling in the mouths of rough sea tongues
a puzzle of sailors knots in a rope thrown
down by a lost & found discretion
dead leaves clumping at
the end of a road
she kicks thru
no red shoes
no broken
heel of
an id

plates of green
peas yellow squash
chicken thighs baked mama
looking out the kitchen window
to black empty fields stalks of old cotton
like dirty bones like stupid roots
with a bad sense of direction
& Scottie gets a phone call from a daughter
seen nor heard in twenty years
& she says she wants to visit
she has a little boy
& maybe he swings a stick at a monster makes
a fierce face & hides behind a rose bush
pretending he is a circle of light;

honey light: somewhere it pools: circles

Richard Lance Williams

Posted over on More Poetry