a sugar maple leaf slips free
counting toward One proof
the Seven Mysteries
God, I count prime gaps
I watch prime numbers growing
only primes orbit
a rule sends one step
loops return periods double
recursion counts One
an iteration
within fluid smoothness frays
water turns inward
can you see the curve
study elliptic rank shifts
findings test the rank
questions spiral out
unknown patterns circle back
pi bends into sight
a proof can be checked
still search cannot prove it now
checking outruns search
every loop turns east
the count folds back into form
through form, God's Haiku
the sugar-maple leaf settles on frost
children of the corn start to awaken
Activate, O anodyne.
Free me from the past.
Thought she was a friend of mine?
Hempen rope, thy mast.
Welling up inside you, thus:
Hell, thy fires surround.
Heaven, how I hate! Minus:
All above the ground!
Pain, you spring eternal.
Contentment, you're a drug.
Commands of the kernel?
Diurnal life, zwangzug.
If you dwell in daylight:
The sight of you will tempt.
Fate, thy bite! Fine fight or flight!
Poison, just pre-empt!
Predator, thy fairest face!
Golden is such grace!
O coyote, choose the chase!
Decency displace!
Wind, thy salmon-running ways!
Mate within the maze?
How indeed, sirs, nerves a-frays!
Priceless how it pays!
Space, open a portal.
I wish away to fly.
Demons of the void, stay full?
Anyhow, we try.
Singularities, deep freeze?
Well, we're off our knees.
All day long we're scratching fleas?
Saying please? At ease...
fig tree stood sturdy in backyard
moon cried, sighed, shone nevertheless
lilies splendid we picked some sweet
breathing nature's savoury lore
rain showers continued soaking
we donned our brown velvet jackets
feet safe in crinkled leather boots
henceforth wrinkled folds golden holds ~
gold burnishes our folds henceforth
feet nails dissipate in ether
velvet frays to shreds in clouds bled
skin flakes in soft spring rain showers
breath continues octagonal
blooms tightly curled, first lily shy
moon fully undressed brings fresh corn
sighs ripple surface of fig drinks ~
Written: Jun 2nd, 2026, for a contest sponsored by: Nette Onclaud
****************
A poetic reply to a piece created by Nobel Prize winner and Mexican poet /writer, Octavio Paz:
There is not
A single soul among the trees
And I
Don't know where I've gone.
"I step—"into the quiet rising from trees,
my fingers are tracing the cold, resistant bark.
"The path— waits, thin as~a breath before speaking"
Birds' flight testifies~our souls prowl woods.
"The wind—" fails to read~the omen of fate,
A frightful form frays from a furred finger.
"The gap—" between roots is all that we are;
a wraith, fumbling for skin~outruns my frantic stride.
"I follow—" until its echo threads my footsteps,
and I am found, rooted to~disappear...
She was let free today
From her bound encasing
Up from her rooted placing.
A cool valiant wind
Rushes under her wing.
Envisioning all
That she would discover
In the glory of her coming days.
A venture creating a distance
Between her and the shelter
Of her youthful plays
As the path to refuge fades
And her glory frays.
Willing her flight
To depths unknown
Finding her strength
Overcoming the chills
Passing the barrier
Of darkened shores
Restoring her glory
She ventures on.
A new horizon is uncovered.
In the land she discovered.
Looking hard too close
reality frays, unravels—
its seams loosening
jarring certainty open
imagination pours in.
Reality stays
sharp only when unchallenged
The moment you ask—
its borders smear and soften
its lines are smudged by your hands
Edges hard and sharp—
dim, drift, and start dissolving
with a close-up stare
inviting luck, risk, doubt, chance
to sway and reshape the view.
At the fuzzy edge
even time begins to shake—
fixed truths shudder free
all that is solid quivers
in the mirage deforming.
Relentless desire
makes things fall apart and bleed
with your inner want—
casting phantom shapes that stir
over the stark truth revealed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The spine cracked like parched soil,
pages swollen at the edges
with spills – cinnamon, grease,
splatters of tomato sauce.
Her handwriting, a slanting vine
across lined paper: add more salt,
stir till it feels right,
Grandma swore by lard.
Faded ink blooms where tears fell,
once, beside funeral cake.
The spine breaks open like a secret told,
pages swollen with stains – cinnamon ghosts,
thumbprints of butter, a splash of burgundy bold.
Her looping script, a faded charcoal host,
maps forgotten Mondays, birthdays gone cold.
Pinch of patience, scribbled beside roast recipe~
an ingredient never bought or sold.
The binding frays where gravy pooled and dried,
a topographical map of meals that fed
more than just hunger. On the margins
her notes bloom: Add less salt; He likes this bread~
Double for grieving written between lines, implied,
the quiet alchemy where love was spread
thicker than jam on all the years inside.
Alphabetic yellows but you would melt my hairs should haze
The dim contour leasing the pounding in my breast
Would a war by all fragile ward fragility to lick your smoke at the corners
Of your mouth to which then French and frenzy make an ocean wider
Green, green is the blackest grass of long twisting cobras told unknown
Gallant as a child holding on to frays of reeds and a bite of snow
Nothing contained in the deaf phlegm of white light
The skill of work in the hot bloods of the thickness imagined
Weaving in the wives room and again to the lantern
To rub the brass and alleviate the dead petals in conquest by the fresh
The very tongue rials twisted as wires chill the season
Unlikely arrivals of the two by shy flaunt
Then veering is the roads aghast by ghastly refuse
Some do become lovers neath the sun ware the moon
But do others weigh the scale of surmise
ocean waves drift in
wildflowers bend in soft winds—
with gentle curves
soothing calm natural minds
without demands or burdens
curves of rivers' arcs
fractals etched in snowflake veins
caress weary eyes
while urban straight lines shatter—
reflection splinters apart
concrete towers thrust
the geometry of squares
clawing at the sky
every sharp angle pierces—
minds that shrink from the hardness
billboards blast their glare
sirens rip through noisy streets
ravaging the ear
urban harshness stunts the soul—
as chaos frays attention
forest silence hums
its calming hymn without words
restoring the peace
of treasure trove memories
stored away in its clearings
dawn's blush dusk's ember
are halos in sky above—
colorful milieus
that frames the day in colors
soft cuddly and welcoming
SHADOWY WHISPERS
unseen voice weaves lies
shadowy whispers linger
truth frays like old thread
©2025 Sara Etgen-Baker
after Privilege of Being by Robert Haas
A tipping point of too many
are talking harshly. Down below,
demon-dead in the unstirred inferno
and perdition of animal thirsting
are coiling one another's tails in response.
They are honeyed vermillion and covered
in trim the texture of hot picamar.
They espy up all the time
at the graceless rapture—
it must sound to them like cold butter
dancing across a cast iron skillet.
Then one voice—she is about to shout—
takes the man's rigid hand and says,
listen to me, and he does.
Or is it the man caressing loose
the gravelly noose of anger?
Anyway, they do,
they listen to each other:
two minds with matured mediums,
hungry to be heard, to be fed by the frisson
of recognition, their skin sizzling with it—
brutal words turned into kindness
by well-intended touches,
and the gossiping, nosy dead are derelict
and growing deaf. They hate it.
They scream a chivvy about injustice
that breaks no skin, but frays the veil
between
what's bone and broth—
a warning, a dirge, a hiss of envy
worse than silence.
I have too many regrets
they bloom like tumors
in the soft tissue of memory,
each one pulsing with
what I should have said
before silence set in
like rigor mortis.
I swallowed whole versions of myself
the reckless, the brave,
the boy who ran
before the door slammed shut.
Now I speak in echoes
of things I almost did.
I wear lives
that were never mine
borrowed skin
stitched with trembling hands.
Time doesn’t pass.
It repeats.
A loop of almosts,
a static scream
beneath my breath.
I reach for moments
already burning.
Beg the past
to hold still
while I cut it open
and try to crawl inside.
But every thread frays.
Every version unravels.
Every choice I didn’t make
drags a knife
through the one that did.
And what’s left?
This composite ghost.
This broken archive.
This aching
palimpsest of a person
who once believed
he had time.
+the knot does not untie from within but frays at the edges, a thread pulled loose by unseen hands+
—we do not walk in bodies—we drift in thought, for there is no world but the one the mind dreams—
[form is a trick of light, a fleeting shape of held-together stars]
And when the hands that bind us let go, we do not vanish—we expand.
+The gatekeeper crumbles into dust, and the tide rushes in+
She renders me unstable,
A force too wild to cradle.
Her laughter cascades,
Like untamed hair upon my chest,
Each word a dagger, sharp and true,
Yet she is my unbridled joy, my undoing too.
She throws her head back,
And my world dissolves,
A riot of mirth only time absolves.
A burst of fireworks, bright and wild,
She ravages my soul, both fierce and unfiled.
Unashamed, she tips the scale,
My reason frays, my senses fail.
Her passion roars, a flame untamed,
An endless hunger I cannot name.
She crashes like tides that never recede,
A tempest feeding my boundless need.
Raw and relentless, she tears me apart,
Unraveling threads that bind my heart.
Her scent lingers, a maddening snare,
A whisper of chaos woven in air.
Madness blooms in her tangled mind,
A force too vast for time to bind.
Her face, a timeless grace,
Galaxies bloom within her gaze.
She walks as though the stars conspire,
To leave a path of eternal fire.
She shakes my world, her tempest reigns,
Glee and destruction in her wake remain.
And as I plunge into the swell,
I’m lost to her, a willing farewell.
In midnight gazes call me sullen upon my cheek
Rousing replies risen bound by chains
Lest mercy be tallowed by all frays
Lest my cheek rise by an untimely hour
Rid my face of discoloured honour
Until it shall stalk by the wretched wicker sun's rays
O wither upon the wicker's sun dropped desire
Feign, o swell upon the imperious bells
Dear wicker, o ire, shalt rain upon the sinner's drencht trap
Leave mellow cleaves upon a skull's prondered fallows
O wicker, dear wicker, fall'n be the strife within my own trial
Ris'n upon a mellow moon's impassive scamp
A whore within such heavenly light, where'n quarry shalt seek a seeming clamp
Fought a feign, O swallow, O blossom by my might
Shalt the wicker sun swoon upon my sorrows?
O life, upon a liver, foreclose a killer
For soon i shall take upon flight
Until the sun's swollen wicker shall take upon the morrow
Shall anguish thrive upon a famisht howl
Come without breaks, nor bend
I shall steal upon the wicker's whelms
Towards the sways, o sorrow shall bend
Belier my helm, 'til all else shall fall hither
'Til I hear the moon call upon the wicker,
And I shall fly.
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