One Poem by Danielle Riccardi

 

Dreamwork & the Self

 

Enter at the mouth.

an empty planter’s container.

 

Pick up the gnarled bark,

rivulets in its skin, walk

 

with this piece, a shorn tongue

floating like a leaf in a tea

 

cup.  Ingesting is a slow gush,

oxymoronic, like the forked

 

spark that says, I am flesh -

I am an open casket, yet

 

my bones litter the journey,

a sun-gold tomato studded path

 

toward a centre.  And dreams

thread themselves like ivy

 

here in the labyrinth, where

shapes are edged, and details

 

are dark. The bark gives way

to the seer stone, rolling. Back

 

to life with cat-shaped eyes,

from which the mountain becomes

 

visible. The mouth moves.

Trains rush, make haste to destination.

 

Words find wings. A voice claimed

can’t be tempered; the truth

 

gathers, sails like two birds

heading for warmer weather.

Danielle Riccardi lives in Connecticut.  Her poems appear in the Love, Art, Play Poet’s Corner, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and is forthcoming in Last Leaves Magazine.