Tuzla, Bosnia-Hercegovina, late 1993

Lines of light tie up the forest
in a timid embrace.
Day again.
A hungry cat comes home from his battles
to sleep on the warm bricks
behind the chimney.
The street not quite awake.
Today's fire and death not yet loaded
inside the hungry eye of today's storm.

Woodshed, make a fire, water from the well.
Morning again.
Porridge in the pot.
You two go running in the forest and
when I hear steps outside, I open the door.
You smile your equal joy
and each of you holds out a bunch of flowers.

One is a sunny orb,
a ballroom dance
of equal green
and gallant petal.
Exact and neat.
A perfect verse,
a pearl of heat.

The other roars with a hundred vegetal voices hungry
tall and fanatic and carelessly
dragging along small insects and some weeds and
resplendent in spider silk and thorn and
I swear, both
sinful and saintly under the spray of stars and strays
and ranting aloud the story of three seasons.

So, flare and sonnet stay,
one to the left, one right,
inside the curious cocoon of my eye,
all day.

A cloud bleeds purple stories that the sky
will allow for a while
then stain with the darker ink of hours and scatter
across the fields below.
Evening again.
Bread on the table, rough and warm like mother's hands
and the light of my candle seems to ask: Sonnet? Flare?

I smile. “Don't you know?”