Morning Glory

I like vines.  I always have.  I believe that maybe I identify with them.  I fill my gardens with many types of vines…pumpkins, hyacinth bean, nasturtiums, passion flowers, moonflowers, trumpet, honeysuckle, mandevilla, morning glories…because I like watching their curly tendrils grow; stretching, entwining in all directions, wild, strong and free.  I think I’m drawn to them like the beetles, bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds I see flirt with them.  I can’t ever know the brilliant blossoms as the soft and smooth, iridescent, humming-winged companions do, so I stand from afar and I admire all the colors, the shapes, and the music that awaken my green soul.  I know I’m in love with their resilience, holding tight to the summer sun’s warm embrace, even in autumn’s early frosted Dawn.  And I love when after a breaking winter, my eye’s behold a spring sprout, pushing up through the dirt, reacquainting itself with the friendly, faded fence that has been waiting months for its companion to return. 

I had a stubborn morning glory this season.  It was a late bloomer that refused to blossom, and when it finally did, I would get one blossom, every two or three days.  I refused to give up hope and I comfortably settled in my patience, but I also understood that sometimes you can’t force a reaction, no matter how much love tends to its needs.  So I backed off, watching, waiting from my kitchen window…every day sending it positive thoughts and hopes from my green heart…grow, strengthen, blossom, believe you can flourish even as the seasons change.  This morning…this frosted October morning…I walked to the kitchen window, as I do every morning, and I beheld stunning azure blossoms, unfurling and trumpeting to the Autumn blue sky, matching hue for hue, my eyes unsure where heavenly silken petal met heavenly silken sky.  There are several more spiral sealed buds that look like buttoned up umbrellas, just waiting for tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…and perhaps each day I will carefully approach the vine, closer and closer with each new morning, until one day I can admire the beauty from up close, extending my small green hand to a triumphant blossom, and quietly introduce myself with a soft, rosy smile and a softly whispered, “Hello, old friend.”

E.A. O'Connell 

Witches Dwell

Witches dwell

In my up turned palms

Constellations sewn in threads from dark ribboned DNA

Birthed the Earth foundation of hands and fingers small and real

Bearing engraved spider webs and the prints their legs etched in the webbing

Spun tightly to my ever morphing palms

While residing in ripening womb

And hypnotic whorls that slither in the vellumous pulp

That know cold comfort in the grip of the dead

All who seek companionship and truths

On nights beyond reach of the All Hallows’ call

They know me as neighbor

And they bring me secrets from dual realms

Where phantoms dwell

E.A. O'Connell

In Nightmares I'm Nightmare

I’ll force my head through the conscious wall

Crowning like baby ripping from the womb

And on the other side will be the disembodied voices put to faces

Eyeless sockets and gaping wounds that fuck with my mind in such a way

That I’m not sure if I’ve broken through the gates of hell

Or just succumbed to my nightmares

And they’ll welcome me with their decomposed bodies

Embracing me against their rotted bones

And I’ll let them hold me and try furiously to know me

With hands that have no feeling

Sensation having deteriorated in death

But they frustrate easily and begin to tear at my flesh

To see what lives within

And if it could supplement

And when they’ve opened me and gutted me

And realize I stand taller without the encapsulating flesh

And I move swiftly without the weight of the internal bog

And that the resident within is an inimitable force of nature

That moves of her own currents in all elements

It’s their turn to stop and wonder if they’ve met the gates of hell

And to try with all their energy to catch me

To shake me awake from their nightmares

E.A. O'Connell

My Own Bully

My own bully

Fueled by and raging on insecurities and fears

Born in between each thought

A nasty little brute

That forces down

The painstakingly constructed

House of cards

Built with patience imprinted on feather light tips

The Fool leans into the Lovers a level surface for the Star

But that wicked little bastard lurks

And with one simple rap on the table

He sabotages the foundation

In a swift flutter of moth’s wings

Ace by queen by two by nine

Spades and clubs

And bleeding hearts

Reduced to a pile of 52 pickup

And over and over and over again

I…Repair …Rebuild…Revert to my masochistic ways

Without ever issuing an apology

E.A. O'Connell

Rosemary Sweet

Rosemary roots at the garden gate

Thick and wild

Woody scented needles

Look to faraway eyes like barbed weapons

Standing guard

Ready to wound any who cross the threshold

Spearing and splintering

But the docile guardian

With tall soft, oily sprigs

Simply begs to be pet

Affection and a sign of peace

By a welcome hand extended

Brushing fingers through the fragrant stems

That infuse the skin evergreen

Hours rich with the lingering perfume

Of remembrance

E.A. O'Connell

Lady

He calls me Lady…I’m his Lady…I’m his

Which makes a slow smile blossom from the depths of my lips

As I think about how three common words strung together by him

Could make me feel all the more special in ordinary days

Because whether calling to me amidst public eyes or whispering to me in our private bed

I feel the love and lust behind each and every letter

Washing over me like warm bath water

And I truly believe in those moments that I own each of those four letters

That they are all mine

Because he gifted them to me

On that night

As I soaked in his tub

He seated and watching through the steamy candle light

As I said goodbye to the wear of the day

And through a smile I hadn’t seen him ever issue forth

He quietly declared me to be

A Singular Lady

And my laughter rang in the echoing rings from water droplets released by the aged faucet

At the thought that my most vulnerable self

My moon drenched skin marred with scars and pin pricked with ink

Could be so desired

As to be defined

As a Lady

And as I slowly slid beneath the water

Out of view

I whispered through my blushing smile

Lady

Assigning to each letter

An aspect of his honest self

From that singular moment

When I shifted from an everyday girl

To his uncommon Lady

E.A. O'Connell

Autumn's Mantel

I awoke and through a sleep weighted haze I saw that the Summer green trees had been dipped in bronze and gold, their statuesque frames plucked from their earth bed by a colossal hand in the secret night, preserving them for the glory of Dawn’s light to glow upon, like a babyhood’s first soleprints displayed on Autumn’s mantel.

E.A. O'Connell