Watery Matters

Watery Matters
by Evan Pettit

With flowers in my hair, I dance around your lonely nights,
With running on my mind, I dream of never-endless flights.
I picture you, with a black coat on, and freckles on your face,
I picture you within arms' reach and I want to fill the empty space.
I spin a silk scarf, it's colder now.
I light a candle for I know how.
I lay down, in the way, and I count each long day
And twist into the dark, vast night.
I swim underwater and ponder my daughter
She visits from within.
I look to the trees and I think of my pleas and please
Release my heart
Into your painted cage.
Painted days, of you.
I write hours through and I hear you in my songs.
I tread slowly but determined
I wait with the birds to kiss the wires and kiss them long goodbye.
I'd die, if I lost my way,
I'd haunt you with each falling gray
Slip of a dress, for you to undress, unarm me and not think of falling rain.
Fall with my hand, to my side,
Drink me in like you drink the tide.
Pin your note to my chest, and kiss me hello. Wish me hello, and wish me to go. Already.
To each sea witch, to each breeze they breathe. I make love to every stone that shifts, under your stepping feet. Step to me, and step with me and talk to me and walk about me.
Walk about my room,
The tide comes in high and far too soon.
I set my creatures free. The sea may strangle me.
I see you in the distance. You beckon me to run.
I drop my nets and open my arms, and as I begin to sprint, my smile knows no measure to its stretch. Even though the sun is in my face, I go.
I go to this Other Place.
I've made love to the fish, and all the colored birds. New herds. It‘s the waters way. They follow me, they paint their way.
I wait for the tall man, with the shadow over his eyes, and I listen to his heart as covers me with his coat...and carries me home.
To the wind.
My windows are colored rose.

* * *

Evan Pettit says: I was born and raised near the Everglades and the sea in Miami , FL. I now choose to live amongst the hills and mountains of TN with my boyfriend and a big, fat cat. I've been attempting poetry for about 20 years and am starting to make a fragile shift to short stories. Shel Silverstein has left a permanent imprint on my brain along with Stephen King, and Clive Barker.

I go through cycles of sending my words out into the world, and one day hope to have them altogether in a book-perhaps with illustrations. In my varied, and many rejections over the years were/are always hints of encouragement (it's amazing what a few words can do), and sometimes genuine enjoyment, out of reading something I wrote. My hope is to leave a mark on people no matter how faint. To unlock something there, and add along to it. I also love to take photographs. I enjoy telling stories in any way that I am able to.

Where do you get the ideas for your poems?

I kind of liken my need to write, to a kind of exorcising of certain feelings out of my head, and heart, and gut. Usually once I'm done I feel as though a weight has been lifted, stomach feels more relaxed.. I can go back to something I wrote and, no matter how old it is, I can invoke exactly what my mood and thoughts were at the time. I like to dress/mask/construct them into a speaking picture, or story-if that makes any sense at all.