Helen

Dip your pink
Painted toes,
Through the moss
Cold and curled.

The silk and beads, white feather bed
Paint your lips a perfect red.
Stain the blank canvas gray
With summer smoke
And child’s play.

Hang the tiny flowered dress
In the cabin with the rest
By the creek where milk snakes nap
And conversations turn perhaps
To gentle,
soft,
sorts of things…

…Mosquitoes kiss while hammocks sway
In the forest far away
Where the quiet,

Comes to stay.