Steve Williams

MERGING CONFLICT

Engage:
Sunday sleep in, my daughter
blows giggle farts on my belly.

Disengage:
The hollow place swells arc
of ribs just below each armpit.

Engage:
Breakfast with the nuthatch,
chestnut chickadee; we need more cereal.

Disengage:
Coconut lime is this woman’s lyric scent,
sugar music stained brown, her mind's voice.

Eng:
Wake in the living room, the squirrel
bitches about the 'squirrel proof' feeder.

Dis:
She and I exchange insomnia. Sleep
is Time: a deity undeserving of worship.

E:
On my daughter's second day of school,
she kneels in the wrong line, blooms a cry.

D:
I snore loud, often, still have my tonsils.
Women in my life need to start sleep first.

*
I cannot hear my wife over rain
pelting the empty puddle of my gut

that lies beyond the front door,
refuses to enter this dry home.

The bedroom has become a furnished
trampoline of unsaid silence,

yet motel rooms are bereft of backyards,
the bounce of birds in maples.

I fly a kite with my daughter
off the edge of a cliff.

To jump is to test fly the kite, would both of us
sink the sail, break the string?

Fall or flight: a constant contemplative choice,
the depth worth the height of the view.

Date of Birth:	October 30, 1957
Location:	Portland, Oregon
Occupation:	Self-employed
Email:	slw1057@Hotmail.com

- November 2004 - Lake Mungo 3 Masterpiece Without Deer The Drummer We Interrupt This Program... Pop off the climbing Merging Conflict