Poetry Dreams

I dream fragments of poetry, my pen balanced in my hand, journal opened to that page already darkened with blots of frustration, asterisks for seemingly important ideas, collections of words and phrases intended for collage and inspiration, pleas for clarity. My poems appear haltingly, in bits and pieces written in several colors of ink, each suited to the nature of the several ideas that flit through my paper mind: vermillion extracted from cinnabar, thinned with vodka for my good days; palest sky-blue from the seed of the avocado bathed in water and lye, for those times when I know I can fly; ocean-blue ultramarine ground from lapis lazuli, used carefully when I feel a need for absence; brown leached from oak galls steeped in acidic water, yielding ink such that when employed, dissolves the paper beneath the words I have written, leaving a lacework of poetry; yellow from crushed petals of the marigold, soaked in tears for when I am confused, noir-black dipped from the depths of my melancholy. The final poems, the ones I can live with, come into focus only after passage through the fermentation of language essential for developing notes of flowers, stones, and juniper. Only then are they shared.