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Botanical Meditations on “One”
1.
I will fall deep into vernal grass
its seed heads formed in grain feathers—
that run between ring-index fingers,
a secret sensual zone of touch
made for satin edged baby blankets,
run like a cherry over the lips
while pondering a three-year-old’s day—
commune with the spider on my book
tinted the same green hue as spring oats
with three prim white stripes upon her back,
commune with the skin on my hands’ backs
burnished the same tawny gold as the first ripe wheat.
2.
The under leaves of begonias glimmer
remembering they are still star’s kin.
Your skin glistens—quartz in the low sun,
quartz of begonias, quartz of the stars,
or as stalagmites in crystal caves
carved of calcium and water—
the very stuff of your bones.
Settled
I don’t talk to you
much anymore.
You don’t talk to me,
and the house pulls
its roof down real low
like a hat over its veranda.
5 a.m. Love
I like to think I know you
best while you’re sleeping,
the curves of your back
the whorls of your hair,
but I’m better at writing
love poems than living—
better at watching
you blessed with sleep
in the grey 5 a.m. light
when the air slips down
in crisp silvery sheets
over your shoulders,
than a coffee and eggs love,
radio clucking
hunched to table
when your sneers scuttle
out like cockroaches and flies.
Tanya Rucosky Noakes was born in the mountains east of Pittsburgh. She has degrees from the University of Pittsburgh
in English Literature and Information Science, and a further degree in Environmental Education from Slippery Rock University.
She has worked as an archivist, editor, organic farmer, teacher, UN representative, and park ranger and has wandered around
Europe, the American West, and spend several years in Thailand and Taiwan. Currently she has wandered over to the other side
of the planet where she owns an organic farm and runs a community environmental organization in rural Australia.
She has been published in Taproot, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Soul Fountain among others, and has a chapbook which came out in May.
Email: Tanya Rucosky Noakes
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