One of My Poems

wild girl

wild girl,
her eyes are green
like woodland streams, at seventeen
she dreams of desert mesas
and rough cowboy lovers
whose tongues are soft,
golden tequila and salty limes
under a moon crusted by dry stars.

back east
she rode the boys too fast,
like wild horses in her dreaming.
they didn't know what had just
passed them by,
wondered maybe if
it was fiery roses, what the sunset
might smell like.

wild girl she dreamed
so far from home, certain her
crazy mustang longing
would carry her there.

now she walks a hillside,
and she steals canned peaches
from the poor people’s food
pantry
when no one is there,
after she’s mopped up the salt
from the fellowship
hall floor, after she’s straightened up the hymnals
and stacked the bibles, bleached the shit stains from
the toilets, and quenched her longing
with leftover
communion grape juice--

this wild girl whose eyes
are still green like forest moss,
but softened by the dew
of useless tears, and rimmed
by lines put there
by squinting too long
into the western sky.
her heart
echoes with painful rhythms
of endless footfalls,
love turning away, saying good-bye--

good-bye to wild girl
dreams, to impossible men,
to friends and soft places
where hope dared speak up for itself.
she’s too hard now, too scared, too scarred, too hurt
to even hint at the hiding place
of her wild rose heart
and let out its scent to trace the sunset wind.

she still dreams a little about
a kind of man who’s
elusive and sad, a little bad,
lean, handsome
craving her touch
her heat
her heart
her special madness. partners in crime
is what they’d be. they would ride
paint mustangs into the sunset.

but really she walks
home from work at sunset,
under a dusty grey sky,
kicking a chunk of ice up the hill.
she knows
the wild boys are mostly
broken old drunks now,
addicts with grand kids ,
big bellies, bigger trucks,
flabby, stupid dreams.

she knows
the wild men are damaged boys--
mean, dangerous, bitten up,
or maybe tamed
by long marriages--
become fat dogs farting before the fire,
full from supper, their teeth now yellow
and flat.

so when she vacuums up baby’s breath
and blood red rose petals after weddings
in the only sanctuary
that hasn't failed her,
and when no one can hear,
except maybe the busy praying
ghosts ,
she howls out her wild girl dreaming
voice, long and sweet.
she sings out her passion in a tongue
the wolves know, under the moon,
above the snow,
sings so that even Jesus looks up
from what he’s doing
and wonders at the sound.