Aftermath {Marigold}

After the storm, everything was washed in gold…lemon melted into honey…honey bled into marigold…which lent into yellow ochre…culminating in raw umber as the sun vacated the sky…that was, by far, the most enchanting…tree silhouettes, black as pitch, against a raw umber sky…it was as if the world was being coiled in the embrace of a colossal snake…and all I could do was stand beneath the belly of a mythical beast, and allow it to swallow me whole…

Juniper Francis Lee.  Aftermath {Marigold}.  May 2018

Morning Observations: May II

I happened upon a baby bird this morning…fallen, stolen, pushed from the warmth of the nest.  A silent and still, pink gelatinous gobbet, with great bulging eyes, lids still closed.  The wings, they were so intricate, so defined, stiff and tucked into the body…they had never known the stretch, nor the span…never sent for the sun, never returned by the moon.  The insects, certain to arrive, will feed, aiding in breaking down its composition…that tiny bird body, bones like minuscule reeds, whistling near silence…unopened wings like a letter lost…eyes and instincts too new to see…will decompose and realign, homing in the earth, breeding with wind and origin-sowed seeds…building from its ruin, a tall and sturdy thistle… …beguiling purple crowns that will beckon to the goldfinches…forgiving stems upon which they will perch, irresistible seeds upon which they will feast, and soft down upon which they will nest…a cycle of loss and being, of rot and existence, of purpose and creation…

E.A. O'Connell

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