This sunflower was bent during one of the groundhog’s romps. Many around it perished; mauled or devoured by my garden guest. When I began the cleanup, I opted not to cut this one away...I still felt a strength in the stem and so I rested it as comfortably as I could among the foliage and allowed nature to take its course. I had faith it would thrive...that the sun, storms, and winds would feed and challenge it, that night would work its enigmatic magic; healing. My morning meditation was considering this sunflower...obscure as it is with bends that mimic piping...it wasn’t afraid, nor ashamed to be weak. Time allowed a healing, that in turn, allowed it a new opportunity for growth..once again reaching towards the sun. I suppose I grow in a way much like this sunflower, which is why I’m partial to it...I’ve allowed weakness, I’ve allowed it to strengthen me, but I’ve never given it permission to break me.

Silence is a wall I construct…a second, third, fourth fortress…a self-preservation that mausoleums existence, a heavy door that warns the fate of trespass… …Silence is a noose I fray in repetitive motion…thread after thread I unfetter the bind…left as a trail of recognition, in the wake of losing my way within my head… …Silence is an undead language incapable of translation, yet I communicate it in the unconscious hours…I mete, I defeat, I am not spared…a voiceless canvas, my mouth fleshed-over, all I want to say is inescapable… …I write streams of ink in bleu and noir, I unleash the beast bewitched by the moons of my hands…and like the new phase, eclipse and devoid, the words I’d written vanish, leaving a stark contrast to the tomb exhumed… …a second sight gives new life…the secrets I write…they are shining trinkets that speak to the crows…somewhere, in a corner of another city in an untouched land, a crow caws, clicks, and purrs my truths to passerby’s who hear clashing tones of melancholy and hunger…an indecipherable juxtaposition, a flesh-made conundrum…my secrets breathe… …the abandonment, it doesn’t hurt me…the loss of hope’s ambition, doesn’t scar me…the initial lie…that reach, invited of its own accord, that’s what killed me… …and ever since, the crows have been burying me, screaming me to open graves, making a pauper of me…unclaimed…the earth absorbs the unsightly decomposition and fuels the unease of my heart, stirring my hands to toil at the invisible, the incomprehensible rite of lone…

The church bells are more than tolling the hour

They’ve begun praising the boundless blue sky

In notes that drift and rise like balloons off to seek adventure

And I don’t want to escape this moment

So I settle myself into the grassy knoll

And let the sun run my flesh

As the chiming raises my thoughts to Parrish

And how his hands must have itched on a day saturated with the brilliancy of color

His mind a daydream of illustrations

And then my thoughts redirect to how multidimensional life is

So I think I’ll just stay a bit

Taking it all in

The strangers in familiar conversation

Dogs leashed for a relieving stroll

Car horns and bus accelerations weaving traffic patterns

Recess ringing freedom's laughter 

Alive

The city’s alive

We're all alive and following the order of our day

And yes there is someone out there in this breath

Exhaling their last

And another their first

And I'm awed by my insignificance in the grand

And humbled by my presence in the now

And it's just noon

On a Wednesday

Marveling at the miraculous art of everyday life 

E.A. O'Connell

…a sweet scent that beckons tender lips to draw near…your fringe are forked tongues, quick to morph to viper fangs, softly puncturing with a milky venom of quiet numb and stuttered heart… …your centermost folds, coiled as an ear that you lend to whispers, to secrets, to hidden depths of the psyche, thoughts of both friends and foes and ills of self… …a steady hand, respecting of your lethal, bids you the care you need, the distance you desire and require… …tending to you, I speak of your growth and beauty, I acknowledge the pain you’re capable of in my gestures, but continue with the care of you, deserving and rewarding…the truth of you…at the forefront of my mind is that which makes you deadly, that which bestills my heart with your addition to my garden…that which keeps me returning, learning…about the truth of you, the truth in me… …

E.A. O'Connell. June/2019