Laura Manuelidis

Borrowed Space

How can we rediscover the joy
that unfurls its scroll of writing for each day:
The physical carousel rounding every sub second of our living—

How can we avoid the drones of our anonymous destruction
Targeting (mainly) the children?
How many children?

How can we recover the flesh of this bright earth
and its manifest beings
Joined, as to the flower,
as to the eyes of the squirrel continuously searching
Not just for food, but for the contours of the acorn?

Swear to me now that you will continue
to listen to the shimmering call of the moon
Under the sea of night:
The molecular calm at the center of the expanding storm.

Invincible

This coil of current runs through me
Until it will not.

Today it seeks more primal routes to travel
Up trumpet vine on fence to cherry trunk
and out to branch in dormancy
Waiting to unknot each embryonic colored coil
that summons the migrant birds again to join
Its hallelujah choirs.

Others want to enter the confines
of the wired internet of selfie mirrors.
But not I!

This plot of garden in my brain
Gazes outside to the invisible spring of light
that grips the sense of transient changes
Where visitors arrive and leave.
Arrive and leave.