Katrina

After the Circus

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

the heat of the day left with the sun
but the earth still hums with warmth 

this is how to ascend
not with fireworks

but with breath

not with certainty

but with hope 

and I 

 (despite the dirt sulked in the creases of bare feet
despite the burn scar that  gently tints my body in ash) 

I am able to exist underneath a sky 
bursting with stars over the tops of tall trees
that sway, a gentle back and forth, 

 these are metaphors of connections never rationalized
a foreshadow of the time I too will give back to the earth 

and I am eager to rebuild 
not with bricks

but with memory

not with mortar

but with mourning 

I am fresh and unsoiled,
comforted in being so close to the earth 

October

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

Like any good fortune teller, I know when the leaves will start to fall. After all, prophets are really just people who pay attention, and after 45 years I’ve started to catch on to the comings and goings of this world. The light and the dark, the heat and the cold. I know it’s too early for the heaters – still another week or so until I can truly find comfort in my wool sweater and fuzzy slippers. But the cold will come, first in the dark of night, then spreading into the morning, until it eventually embraces the day, clinging to the earth under the bright of winter sun.

By now, I am used to the cycle of the seasons. By now, I can predict the fullness and emptiness of the moon. By now, I should anticipant my mood swings, know when the pills stop working, have an innate knowledge of when my body needs a fast, a night in, a few hours of solitude. By now, I should be able to know how to take care of all that I need.  The trees have it down; their wardrobes already picked out for the fall, the winter, the spring, and eventual return to summer – and repeat and repeat and repeat.

Patience

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I lost Patience,
or maybe she ran away.
Glory knows, I haven’t been
giving her the attention or
the praise she deserves,

and it’s been a minute
since I listened to her advice
with anything more than the practiced
active listening skills I learned
while bartending in my twenties.

Last I saw,
she was sitting alone at the table near the door,
shifting her eyes between empty glass and open door.

She’s not there now. Perhaps she
just needed a minute to straighten her backbone
and remember her composure. Perhaps
she will be back, but it seems unlikely.

And I admit:

disappearing has always been
more than an impressive trick;
it is a necessity,
right up there with invisibility.

She helped me learn both
once upon a time.

So let her have the rest of the night off.
I hope she went home early
to beat the traffic. Maybe she wasn’t
too tired to wash her face and indulged
in a hot shower.  Maybe she’ll read a
chapter or at least a poem or two
and with any luck, she’ll fall asleep easy
and warm and oh so very relieved.