First Flight

I hold the words gently in my mind,

round, expectant, warm

like one small bird in my hand,

eager and alive, awaiting its first flight.

I lay them on the page and discover

they are only flat, lifeless shadows

looking up, mocking me.

In desperation I take paste and scissors to them,

reconstruct them one by one,

I jumble them together and watch them land

until they would do my bidding.

I have only the success I would have had

if I pasted that small warm bird together

from bone and feather, then willed it to fly.

©2007 Donna Jo Wallace.

Coffee House

Cups fill to the brim with music

rich and warm, poems
brown and frothy

Guitars burst with pages from life, real and hard

Masked thinly by tune and rhythm.

We are neighbors who agree to be strangers,

To seek kind anonymity for

memories too harsh to bear

dreams too fragile to speak aloud.

Performer or audience, to watch or to do

Here, it’s all the same.

To slow down

for an evening separate from a frenzied world

We take a breath of another life.

We take away bits of each other;

See in others bits of ourselves.

We have stolen a moment of sacred sharing

Among strangers who are really neighbors.

©2011 Donna Jo Wallace.