Laurel Turner #fibropoet with pencils for legs

…Answer me quickly./ My days vanish like smoke;/ my bones burn like glowing embers.   Song 102/   Air thrashed the leaves in its teeth—/ a yellow-eyed cougar let loose in our trees/ or a pair of golden angel wings/ flapped and warned of something big—/   beyond our fence.   We caught our breath,/ stopped air-bent toward the trees/ already lit with cackles, cries tropical and wild;/ Multi-colored toucans (I told my lover)/   have traded their enchanted isles/ for the Pacific Northwest/. And now, reveled and now, war/ toward the siege against their sacred place/   under the moss arches of our maple trees/ We surrendered, lowered our held hands/ that shrivel and shrink;  These sterile days/ want and waste like an unhinged prostate./    And then,  a fall or leap from the low branch—/ a Goliath of her kind strapped in red crest,/ draped in sable cape.   Her helmet is not her salvation;/ Father wrapped her tongue around her brain for that