Origami Microchap

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Cover Collage by JanK

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With us, in the picture

The quartet of currawongs
still sing to the sycamore
as Autumn now tints on
the branch.

And art sketches sidewalks
with leaf lore and legacy
as trees drop their sleeves, yet
elude that first frost a bit longer.

With us in the picture for
another full moon or so
till winds whip the willow
with Winter again.

The nights, getting longer

Will you miss them as I will
on your gutted out branch
where the moon slips herself
through the ache of your hollows.

Will you miss them as I will
when the circus of songbirds
seduced by the southern belle

succumbs to her shoreline, far
from these nor'easter nights
as the summertime sing-along
begins to forget us.

Will you miss them as I will?

On her way home

There'll be several storms
some low flying planes, sky
scraping structures, pollution

of plenty, lean times of famine
where she’s trapped between
life and obscurity.

All on the way, to her welcome
back home, in the arms of the
still leafless tree.

On the note of the nightingale

The nocturnal soliloquy
dispels of the hard edge
of those final few frosts

With a singular note
straight to the marrow

she sings

releasing my butterfly
returning the Spring.

Ballad of blues

An occasional wren
still blesses the branch, as
sun’s setting early now
and a ballad of blues, pales
between first dance and
last call for leaves.

We barter for time and a
promise of joy in the afterlife
and more magical Mondays.

But the sun shifts its light
from us, as its already decided
in spite of our pipe dreaming
fantasies.

The songbird's flown south.

Bringing back morning

The sky, somewhat sleepy
presenting with daylight
with darkness, declining

as songs of the sycamore
sketch through bare branches.

Chirping with cheerfulness
through the fog and the frost
birds bring the morning.

Slipping off slumber
pinking with poetry
watching the window world

I wake
to the Sunday sonata.

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Emalisa Rose © 2022

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Cover: Pillars of Creation by Lauri Burke

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birdman blue

in your pinstriping
finery, grazing my branch

you winked at me once,
bird of blue, but never
came ‘round again

and i’ve paled, hinged
to your circadian circus

my leaves in remiss of
your summertime songs.

branches, holding

twirling the branch
in a whirl of white
filigree, little leaf sets
off to sojourn

and here we are, freed
by october, in lieu of
the confines of contiguous
capsize

released by the season
no longer holding us

this water paint life

here, where we picnicked
in flowering fields, stand

wispy white cloud
apparitions, offering wishes

while flash dancing
through

then erasing again

like us, i confess --

in this water paint life

once, we were storming

once storming, we’ve
dallied - dilutes of
summer’s sonography

our maritime musings now
whispers of foam fabrication

artisans, undecipherable
sidelined at seashore

in the etch-a sketch life
we’ve been drawn into

mosaics of memoir and
mixed metaphor

stars seeking significance

of obscurity’s participles

collapsed by the carolling
wave, interception by whims
of the crossover tides

we rise, then recenter

this incessant hereafter
we’ve locked ourselves into

obscurity’s participles

contrived then released

we are droplets, relentless

superfluous silence

sleepless

retrospectively

clairvoyant cartography
the brink of divinity

of endings began, rooting
up from this place that
now threatens entanglement

we can leave here --

loose leaves taking sojourn

retrospectively,
we never existed.

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Emalisa Rose © 2021

Connected by Sparrows

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Cover art by Lauri Burke

Our mutual arrangement

They hang out all day;

on the branch, off the branch.

Roy says to stop feeding them;
they need to make bank on their own.

I told him that it’s the mama in me,
with a strong urge to feed, with a
penchant for songbirds and alley cats.

Marie has her wings in position,
singing south of the sycamore, she
bathes in the sunlight’s redemption.

I toss out some sparrow seed and wait
for the passerines to inspire some poems
in for me.

Somehow, we meet up again

Some scattered threads
still macrame between the
holes of wintered branches.

Jumbled pieces sketch amid
the first of Spring’s preamble;
clearly remnants from season’s
past, Summer’s last thrill seekers.

Yet somehow, we meet up again;

two-thirds on the whims of wind
the other third, perhaps on
Pollyannic thinking.

And here we are, from once that time
sublime, when we were crosswind
conjured, in wishes given, through
the simple promise of a dandelion.

The flowers need water

"We should have been flowers,"
he said. "We could dance in the rain
in a field filled with poetry."

He wanted to shield me, to cover
my tresses, from the whirl of the
wind storm at the cloud's interjection.

I told him to toss it;

toss the umbrella with its semblance
of shelter,

jump over the dynamite.

The flowers need water.

Regarding, the willows

We tiptoe the morning
post-storm in the opulence
shimmering suns, stitching
our haloes of happenstance,

you rummage through wildflowers
assuring that calm will eclipse
the catastrophe; the two of us
tremble on tourniquets.

And the willows are wilding.

Alliterations

bending over the bridges of barnegat
sycamores sigh in a semblance of spring

acrobats, mummers and street performers

contortionists, claiming the hire wire
over the underpass, under the bridge
to the river of trinity

when skies claim the clouds and rain
weeps the willow

holding my heart in a helix of happenstance -

the trees are ambidextrous.

Through your memory, birds peck

He said there'd be more
in the morning, that

the winds would collect
then exonerate,

reversing the blooms
back to seed

into clusters that clouds
redistribute in waterfalls

and the birds would devour them.

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Emalisa Rose © 2021