Spring: Spider

…a green spider…no bigger than a fennel seed, the hue of a fiddlehead…slowly approached…its underworld mirrored in the black glass…I offered my finger, and it gave welcome…atop the crescent moon of my nail, it spun silk…liquid descension, fluid ascension…with the breeze it took to the west…and I watched in awe…a mote of life…free in its will…

E.A. O'Connell

Morning Observations: May

Morning walk…and my thoughts trail in all directions, apparitions revisiting earthen routines…with arms that search the dawning blindness, the energy imprints on the hands and roots in my senses…for the first time this Spring, the air finally carried the scent of sunlight and photosynthesis…my tongue ghosting the impression of green…young leaves horizon-bent in their glories, lush and songful in the breeze…my bare feet soaked in comfort from the warming slate, radiating through nerves, the length of my legs…blood flow and I breathe…walking the garden I find a sprig of the columbine had bent overnight…the slim stem a model of strength, not easily snapped between my fingers…the singular bloom, a bowing symmetry of formidable curves…in the dark hours, a young rose had been devoured…and my mind, enrapt with thoughts of a soft mouth that can endure the spike of thorns…what sounds it must form…

E.A. O'Connell

Spectrum: Yellow/Gold

My day started in yellow…waking to a sunrise that lit the sky in an immortal light…gilding the green…setting white petals aflame… …a solitary rook…claws clicking in a paced step, atop the slate roof…spoke in ripples…a quaking internal monologue…a mourning, a music, a meditation… …daylight notes how the tulips are waning…the cherry blossoms are few…but yellow iris stunned my silence…what wasn’t last evening, was by morning…blooming the hue of a quarter risen moon… …afternoon brought painted ladies alighted atop plush dandelion heads…a Wonderland parallel phased between white light streaming… …My day ended in yellow…a singular goldfinch…harbinger of summer, of sun, of resurrection…charting future titans

E.A. O'Connell

Senses

…I recovered a childhood habit of mine…a prismatic paperweight with singular orange and green bands running through…holding it to my eye in the late afternoon light…the clear view felt like time had been endlessly rewound and replayed…orange pained me with dread of captivity…green spoke a language that made my adrenaline rush and my blood sing…

…in late spring/early summer…I’d collect fallen tulip poplar blooms…running my fingers over and through the petal design…yellow, orange, and green…I’d hold the flower to my eyes…looking skyward under a midday sun…kaleidoscoping the colors…to and through an opaque life…but the essence of the bloom…that gave a new define: wings like fractured, dust-beaten windows knowing the first few raindrops that bullet-hole clarity— a body of shadows with a spindle leg strong hold on dew slick bark— the humid conception & resurrection— of cicada hum…

E.A. O'Connell

Slow Spring (Magnolia)

Silver fur unfurled, slipped like silk from a shoulder, the pink flesh not unlike an open wound, an open woman.

A primal pulse halted the skeletal fingers, an unseen ticking clock…knuckles cracking, the strength of Spring beating back Winter…laboring a warming age through ice and sunlight.

Just a fracture of bloom, a fraction of God.

E.A. O'Connell

Dream Series: Desert Gods

Full moon light: shadows casting a thick green hue…succulents and grass the blue burn of flame…pale petals and stone a spectral glow.

My mind alternated: a restless city half-sleep and distant desert visions: bat wing rhythms and night blooming cereus.

A song of insect and flora storming my senses: the lightning branches voicing a distant convergence: an ethereal billowing about my body and jointed arachnid legs edging past my feet.

Stepped monolithic gods poured of blood: evoke a wild serenity: my son whispering at the back of my ear: They hold all the secrets. Will they respond? If my canvases call or your film?

…so I walk towards, closing the distance until I can place my palms to the preserved flesh…shutting my eyes and letting down all guard…feeling a pull…a pulse…a warmth…a glow…

…my silences, loud as they’ve been…have still more to learn from the immortals and beasts of arid land…

…the maps remain…long after I’ve shaken sleep from my bones…

E.A. O'Connell

...

At least once a day I look out on the sycamore…stoic giant existing in shapes of seasonal cusps…and I meditate on the hues of bark and foliage, the angles and lines of sunlight and shadows, the cut rope that still sways in absence of its swing. It’s an unloved tree; unowned, misunderstood, neglected: an island…fear gets the better of some, calling upon its death. I calculate distance and height, I hypothesize directional destruction, and I address probabilities: age and health. I hear no alarms sounding. My mind always circles back…to the majestic stature that flexes with every gust…tornado bearing down, sky of night backdrop to pallid complexion, me with infant in arms and a womb full, glimpsing the give, imploring of its god, as cracking maple joints took my hearing…slate, shutters, glass, roofs…betraying…but never the sycamore…imposing and gentle, true to roots…nor’easters that thrash and splinter the branches, the frozen weight of ice and snow…the latest taking with it each nest that dappled the limbs…but still it reaches, widens, heightens…most mornings I get lost in labyrinthine thoughts, eyes towards the sycamore, coffee in hand, but I almost always give to dreams…the branch from which I’d swing…the crook I’d nestle within, book after book read from my perch…the limb of greatest height, my toes would grip, closing the distance between the moon and my fingertips…

E.A. O'Connell