Who Chooses the Music (Day 481)

My cat is a tiger lily, 

wild and bright.

Vivaldi is his kryptonite.

To get him into bed at night,

I turn on The Four Seasons.

My dog is innocent 

as a daisy.

Bach settles her 

when she feels crazy. 

Sheep safely grazing 

make her lazy.

She finds sonatas pleasing. 

Sweet music soothes

the savage beast,

so I’ve collelcted quite a feast

of Beethoven, Hydn, and Liszt,

for pets who need appeasing. 

Who needs another reason?

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Holding On (Day 461)

Raspberry Beret.

Twenty-six flights of stairs.

Over and over.

Old proverb tells us:

Youth is wasted on the young.

Thoughtlessly squandered.

How else could it be?

It’s painful, living, loving.

If we knew, would we?

Lovers, parents, pets,

Smooth skin, stamina, joints, minds—

We learn to let go.

Think how tragic death would be,

If we died still holding on.

(c) by Hannah Six

One long ‘Thank you’ (Day 458)

True love is really

one long 

      Thank you

it is giving up 

   your ego

           your rights

             your pride

and opening to 

   imagination

         vulnerability

         comfort

—a 10-year-old child 

sitting on a curb

conversing with 

a pale yellow dog

   befuddled

      devoted

         exposed

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: “If Nick Nolte were a dog...” 

by Christopher Michel via Wikimedia Commons

Behind Him (Day 443)

he hasn’t met her 

yet   but when he looks 

back   he sees her 

there   behind him   

just around the corner 

he just rounded   and 

before him 

is the woman he knew 

yesterday   who is 

no longer someone 

he knows   but someone 

he has yet to meet

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: MaxPixel

Ever (Day 442)

Sun sliding

behind the hills, 

we sat 

on the floor, 

knees crossed, and 

you told me that 

if I asked you to 

stay 

you would 

throw it all away 

for me. 

Why didn’t you

leave then? 

Could you not 

see that 

by giving up 

your own dreams, 

you were 

also damning mine?

Or didn’t you

understand that

what I meant

when I asked 

you not to leave, 

was: Ever.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: ribastank/Pixabay

Books Suit Me (Day 438)

books suit me like navy blue

I am told   choosing is simple 

akin to buying this small house

remember when you looked 

inside all those hollow sugar 

Easter eggs   too small or large

too hot or too cold  too close or

too far away   you were afraid 

no one would come to admire 

your lush garden on Sundays 

or read my favorite novel    after 

I’m gone you’ll find it falls open 

to the passage that inspires and

comforts me   like those photos 

of the old you   the fragrance of

libraries   this small hollow house

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Liz West/Flickr

In the Second Place (Day 431)

...in the first place, she said 

to the window, the violet desert 

night, her flushed face mirrored 

back in a reflection, where their 

eyes met. And, in the second, 

you don’t even know who I am. 

A swell of annoyance, or maybe 

it was boredom, lifted her off 

her feet for a few seconds, and 

suddenly, she could see herself 

from outside, from out there where 

stormclouds of stars piled up on 

the horizon, where a hot wind 

sipped sweat from your skin so 

quickly you never felt a prickle, 

where that silvery road unwound 

like a mystery, northward, over 

a series of rocky hills.

Outside, where the scrub brush 

met the drive, two glowing green 

eyes appeared like magic. They 

seemed to be looking directly at 

her, shimmering in rising waves of 

ambient heat. She gazed back, 

momentarily unaware of the man 

waiting for her to further explain 

herself. The green eyes blinked 

once, twice—then vanished as 

she stepped out into the evening

closing the door firmly behind her.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: fancycrave1/Pixabay

Too Many Apples (Day 410)

a heart wary of commitment

afraid of cutting 

more roses

than the vase can hold

or peeling 

too many apples 

for the holiday pie

a feeling like a little twinge 

of nostalgia for 

slices of coral sand 

and oceans

       so bright

           they singe the eyes

or like one too many 

long late meetings 

    at the office, 

while, at home,

I change the sheets 

on our old bed and clean 

all the windows

until they seem to disappear

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Jeremy Hiebert/Flickr

When You Rise (Day 397)

When you rise above 

the clouds  say hello 

to the blue for me

memorize its myriad 

hues and shades from 
ice to indigo  tell me if 
you can see the stars 

when you look up or 

if they are hidden by that 
golden light warming 

your flushed cheeks  rest 
a moment on 
the terrible wind 
that bears you aloft 

and look down on 

the soft undulations of 
the sea stretching like 

bleached cotton sheets 
beneath you  only the quilts 

on our shared bed 

can enfold you as softly  
only my arms support you 
with the strength of that 
high gale and 
the roughest tides 
of time we long to sail 
together will quiet when 
you are near again

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: macayran via Pixabay

Breathless (Day 395)

for the longest  that  want  time making

myself  that electric blood-singeing 

current  making you  lingering darkening

that look  widening  that rising attraction  

moving  leaning toward  when entering 

a room where another is  a moment

already  waiting a fraction of   that 

attraction too slow  long  years eagerly

outpaced  too lately  too forward  ancient 

foldings inward  unforetold distraction  

enough  just that  enough  I am  I don’t  

want that  I want that  I didn’t  but I do

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Jack Fiallos via Wikimedia

Watercolors (Day 390)

Where the edges

are not, there now

twist and turn, into cavernous

echoing chambers, bleeding

rivulets of umber diverging into

creases that vein the vast,

opaline expanse of 

love’s cold, hard floor,

over which we slipped and

ran, laughing until we cried, our

seawater tears blooming like watercolors.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: JMW Turner, Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire, England (ca. 1834), 
watercolor, Cinninnati Art Museum (via Wikimedia)

An Ordinary Letter (Day 386)

He takes what looks like an ordinary letter 

the paper slightly worn and smudged, 

but scrolled and looped with his extraordinary

handwriting, to the blue mailbox up the block.

Left hand snug in the pocket of his beige jacket, 

right barely holding the graying pink leash, 

at the end of which a heavy-set, low-slung 

white mutt ambles companionably.

Requiring only a moment to relieve herself, to 

sniff a leaf here, a carelessly-tossed food wrapper 

there, the dog (like the man) has few expectations, 

and is therefore seldom disappointed.

At the end of the block, he glances sheepishly 

at the empty streets and sidewalks—chastising 

himself for his inexplicable sense of shame—

counts to three under his breath, pulls the handle.

Like a jail-cell door, the mailbox clangs shut. 

His letter slides down the chute, off the other mail

with a swoosh. Then, shrugging imperceptibly, as if 

to say: Well, that’s done, then, he turns toward home. 

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Pixabay

Almost Always True (Day 366)

The only things are bitter 

words and politics and cold 

blue sky aching tired and 

purring under a warm river of 

chocolate and chamber music 

reading and resting warmly 

wrapped in the things we used 

to love how they lifted and 

lightened our troubles until 

they merely floated away like 

feverish dreams and poetry 

winter and absinthe inspire 

and so that’s all I able to give 

to you but at least you knew

it was always almost true 

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Advertising poster for "Absinthe Rosinette",

 published by Imprimerie Camis, Paris, circa 1900; 

via Wikimedia Commons

Longed for (Day 363)

night imploded 

into sleek weeks 

of longed-for lethargy 

a million stars became 

months of quiet musings 

yet in the end it was not 

my lover blackberry-ripe 

with unnewsworthy stories 

who constrained my heart 

it was my friend

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Pixabay

Serengeti Love Song (Day 357)

Girraffes can be

terribly romantic, 

intimate with 

the nuances of love. 

Until I met you,

eyelashes melting 

in the sub-Saharan rain,

I lived for years  

doubting whether 

this was true.

Yet there you were,

velvet nose

buried in sweet acacia,

ossicones gold with pollen,

the mighty thrumming

of your powerful heart 

like a distant drum,

luring me.

I longed to nuzzle 

your pale neck, 

to count the hot brown 

patches strewn across 

your hide, and sighed,

Alas.

But at this humble sound, 

your ears pricked up, 

your brown eyes softened, 

and time seemed

to trip and stumble. 

Later—with the taste

of your hot urine mingling 

with rain upon my 

bruise-tinged tongue—

we wondered at a love 

so vast that it could 

barely be contained within 

the rippling boundaries of 

our sweeping Serengeti Plain.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: 12019/Pixabay

• Giraffe FAQs: https://giraffeconservation.org/faqs/ 
• Types of giraffes: https://giraffeconservation.org/giraffe-species/
• “Fun facts about giraffe sex...” (which involves a mouthful of urine): https://www.popsci.com/giraffe-reproduction-birth-live-stream