The World is Lost to Me
Ghosts brood outside my house
under redwood trees surrounding my home
outside my home their fingers gather shadows
for the sake of dark green
In a year of afternoons, fog tethers itself to my house
Dark porch brims with light in my home
like a throatful of tears
My son hovers in the dark stars above my home
Walls echo moment and memory in my home
where I roam in this rain-soaked wound
House raging with zigzag lightning house
evening dark
rhubarb and huckleberries
House shadowed with green rain and redwoods
restore my heart to me
restore my mind to me
restore any starlight
I live in my home with Rhubarb Boy
I live in my home with Huckleberry Girl
I live in my home where ghosts unknit our bones
Where I live under shadowed trees
older than anyone I have ever known
Wo Ich bin der welt abhanden gekommen
Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios‘ award-winning chapbook, Special Delivery, was published in 2016, her second, Empty the Ocean with a Thimble by Word Tech Communications, and her third, A Concerto for an Empty Frame: Music for Survival by Kelsay Books. Nominated three times for a pushcart prize, she has poems published in various anthologies and journals including Stories of Music, The Poeming Pigeon, The Blue Mountain Review, American Journal of Poetry, and The Inflectionist Review. She is editor of the Writers of the Mendocino Coast Anthology,and Professor Emerita from American University in Washington DC.
