Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios

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.