Notes from July

I return to visit
the old brittle rusted forests
ablaze, valley where sepia faces
of the dead and distant
watch over my sleep.
I wake gagging on smoke.
One of those faces can't tell
a finch from a wren
but knows a robin
when she sees one.
One can't envision
the death she sucks
into her lungs and embraces
in her bosom as a long lost
love. Let August go goldenrod
the swallowtail air undulate
yellow, pollen settle in the lines
of our palms to map all
contingencies considered possible.
A good man from July
may still love, as much
as he knows how, the woman
I was before, so let July
skip ahead as it will linger
longer when we study
each version of ourselves
out of order.
What I know in my heart is
the rivers between us
run for reasons beyond.
And when I touched your hand
I hope you felt it
was with some kindness
for myself.

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Born and raised in Wyoming, Shelly Norris earned an MFA from University of Alaska Fairbanks decades ago. Poised on the verge of full retirement from a shadow career teaching college composition and editing for others, she now spends more time writing. Her poems have appeared in The Owen Wister Review, Open Window Review, Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers, and more recently in The Writer's Club/Gray Thoughts, Spillwords, Academy of the Heart and Mind, The Drabble, vox poetica, The Cabinet of Heed, as well as three anthologies published by Sweety Cat Press. She has recently published two short stories, one in Short Story Town. She resides in the woods of central Missouri with her husband John, two dogs, and seven cats. Please, don't judge.