Cranberry Columbine Creek

It’s like the 
damp littered forest is 
obfuscating my senses.
The way it smells,
the way you smell, 
running heartily down the mountain.
Catch me!
Catch up to me! 
Cranberry columbine creek.

To the boughing trees where I sink:
The summer sun 
is lemonade 
fade 
through branches cool and long.
The dawn and then 
the dusk. 
East to west.
Colors falling 
downward 
in the glass;
sweetened syrup.

And I’m a wet mess 
river swamp thing; algae:
Salmon skin 
shining in the 
confluence 
of tributary 
creek to river,
river to sea.

I left you in the dust of basalt 
but we were already breaking; 
the summer sun 
iced lemonade,
cold beer, warm wine, 
and water-blood. 
The words we loved. 
We drank so much we consumed each other!
We carved our names into sandstone 
as if they would stay,
as if I would stay.

Bardess.
Seeker.
Poetess. 
Seeker.

In the trees elf-disc comes through in
grenadine.
I can’t stop facing 
cranberry colored,
crimson-basted 
lemonade-draining creek.
Cranberry. Columbine. Creek.

Beloved, you died in those sugary woods. 
My heart, your heart;
the same creature beating. 
Wrapped in fat, 
dripping dark black
blood in a trap 
dangled from doorway.
Cranberry columbine creek.

I wanted to write,
but you hung your heart in the trap 
and had it bleed before me, 
as if me writing would destroy us.
Somehow you knew 
if I was given the space to write,
I would leave.
Leave!
Inevitable that I leave.

Destroyer.
Seeker.
Traveler.
Seeker.

Mountains high and glossed.
Lemons squeezed and tossed, 
tossed then found,
lost, and bound 
to standing rocks 
beside the stream 
looking down, 
not behind,
but down.
At
cranberry columbine creek.