I like the way the stars seem to come out one at a time. Then all at once. The feeling of being outside looking in. Geese in flight, steady like a night train overhead. Two owls calling out to each-other from the tree tops. Silhouetted against the fading light. The wind rustling the leaves that have not yet fallen. Four walls make it hard to think, hard to dream. Wings cut the air, sounding out like the hinges of a wooden window frame. Opening and closing with effort, warped

We might, on some ordinary day…take for granted how beholden we are to the seasons and the countenance of each day and night. But you can not tell me that you have forgotten, on a night like tonight. When the rain comes down steadily, shining in the dark reflections of the street lamps. Tell me truthfully that you do not sit in the quiet breathing in the scents of spring like your life depends on it. Like your black and white isn’t bubbling up with colors you’d all but forgot

Nothing moves, not yet. The gusting wind we’ve all been warned of has not shown its face. The news and the sky, the spaces between stillness that only just whisper, all tell us that it is headed this way. I keep one ear to the window while I work, waiting to see if it is my breath or my veins that will catch the scent first. Blow down the walls, stir up the spirits, lift up our minds. I am ready to go higher. Listening now, to the tops of the trees and the winding of the road

What do you want when you reach the end of wanting? Something warm and soft to match your breath to? Not sharp edges and restless sleep. Not shadows casting shadows. You reach for soft curves in the soft light. You want sleep to come easy, chests that rise and fall as one. But I am wide awake. Do not reach for me. I need this breath and these sharp edges. The beginning is close enough to taste. #outofdarkness #poetry #ventureforth © Elizabeth McLaughlin

That my racing mind could keep the pace of the electricity moving in my veins. Gathering moments whole like threads to be woven into each landscape of my heart's desire. Memories from this lifetime, too young to draw from and send forth. To build the world that lives inside of the four walls of all this longing. This box, a room with no floor and no ceiling. Still so carefully hidden from view. I slip in from above, or from below. To hold vigil with the darkest of hopes and h

What does it mean to move; to be moved? Where do we come from? But where does that come from? To be made up of atoms...beams of light and old scars. To be made up. Of a million pieces. Heart jumps at that first tremor of thunder, why is that? A familiar resonance, a familial rhythm. Reaching out beat for beat beyond this living cage. Peregrine. Flexing it’s wings. The heart is. Songbird, scavenger. Predator or prey? Nightingale and vulture. She does not want to live here (the

Equal parts hopeless romance and cynical disdain. Equal parts wanting to wrap myself around you, and to stay this far away. Equal parts raucous laughter and melancholy reflection. Just as many parts that desire to escape into dreams as there are those not wanting to miss a moment of this waking life. /// So you can see what a dilemma I am (in). #poetry #greatdivide #halfandhalf #split © Elizabeth McLaughlin

The very beginning, barely beginning... rocking toward the source. One foot on either side of the precipice. Invisible thresholds. We are stepping over. We are wading through. Nothing stays the same. An uneasy rite of passage. Too many facets to count. Unwinding as we reach the edge. Then comes the bridge, then comes the fuse. Metamorphosis takes time, time does not exist. #poems #poetry #threshold © Elizabeth McLaughlin

The cutlery that lives under the bed in the scarred wooden box with one broken hinge. Worn red velvet inside of its case, is on this table. Set alongside crystal and wooden vessels that are for drinking from. Except for today. Today we are using them to hold our secrets. At this table. In this hour. Light is coming through the glass panes of the kitchen windows, unabsolved. We blink at its obtrusion as it drapes the tea stained cloth that lines this table. There are prayers i

Why is it, do you think...that we don’t know how to say what we mean? I don’t care about climate change. Climates change. But I do care about pollution and excess. I do care that we are careless and arrogant and shortsighted. People can argue about semantics until the last tree burns to the ground. Until the sea chokes on our refuse. They can argue until they are dead and buried. But there are certain things that aren’t based on opinions. There are certain things that don't d

Making landfall. That first contact. The discovery of a new world. Our first steps onto wild earth. You breathe me in like the first signs of spring after a long winter. A whisper like a rumble of thunder in the distance. A sign that lighting is sure to strike. And when it did you were burned inside of me for good. Persistently, relentlessly, eternally. I can always smell the fire, I can always feel the lines etched under my skin. #poetry #life #truth #love © Elizabeth McLau

Traveling forward and back. A year ago to the day. The ice is singing. Or crying. Or just lamenting in clear tones to no one in particular. If string theory had a sound, I imagine it would sound something like this. Catapulting between here and there. Paradoxical. A loud whisper, a haunting sort of echo. Distant, immediate. An unfamiliar tongue. An open mouth, an open doorway. The water is shifting, the ice too. Gasping and moaning as they take on a new shape. Like they alway

I’ve been having nightmares, the kind that shake you awake soaked in sweat. The kind that make you forget where you are, but not what you are running from. Glimpses of old ghosts making pacts with new ones. Haunting my dreams, sharing my secrets. Walking with their arms around one another. Falling in love and multiplying in the darkest corners of my mind. #dreams #nightmares #poetry #dreams © Elizabeth McLaughlin

The first time you called while I was in the room, I felt her race past me to get to you. And I won’t forget. Cradled in her daughter's arms, this time you came more gently. And I won’t forget. Years later I saw you force a grown man screaming to his knees, and I won’t forget. Then came the night that you showed me your face. You came to call before you took him. And I am trying to forget. #poetry #poems #life #death #memory © Elizabeth McLaughlin

Lined now, still the envy of the crows and the mockingbirds. Weighed down by stones wound tightly in gold and silver. Tapping the hard wood of the table. Spinning in slow circles as the whole world tilts around her. She is growing impatient. The clocks all turn their faces away. There is a statue of a wooden fisherman on the landing. Light drapes the stairwell from a second story window. Furniture that is meant to be admired, never used. Green suede. Green. The same green as

First nightfall draws first blood. A New Year is nothing new to her, but the poetry in this is too obvious to pass by. So she draws this line. In the sand, in the water, in the dark. Like notes on a far away wind she comes whispering secrets, speaking clearly but only loud enough that I can hear. The first cut belongs to me this time around the sun. She leaves a mark that I am meant to heal myself. Out in the dwindling darkness the crops that wait tilled remain un-seeded. All

Just there. That great wide moon sliding through the dusty pink sky toward the horizon Toward the foothills. And my heart skips a beat. 6 degrees. Bright and cold. Night as clear as day shining in the western sky this morning. We’re spinning somewhere in between. Between dreams, around memories. Rubbing the sleep from our eyes, Stepping out into the winter air. There is nothing to consider, no terms to weigh. The answers are strewn out beyond the headlights, neat and definite

She wakes me out of a heavy sleep, the earliest darkest hours of the morning. Placing her head on the pillow beside me, though she does not rest. It is her sharp and shivering wakefulness that draws me out of sleep. I start and then drift off again. Ah. But here now, in the morning light. Her face rises up between the gray bank of clouds and the clear blue sky below them. Watchful. Even as she dissolves back into the wild hills. #poetry #moon #moonset #nature #moonnotes © Eli

Every 29 and a half days, marking the start of the lunar cycle. We are plunged into darkness, and in the darkness, things begin to line up. Earth to one side, fire to the other, ether in the spaces in between. When the timing is just right for things to begin. The dark moon makes way for the new. It travels cloaked in the glare of the suns light. And this one moves closer, reaching farther. Churning the seas, tugging harder at the tides. We have grown wiser and move with her

My mother worries. She can’t help but want to pull us back into the nest. But we aren’t baby birds. We are shape shifters born to navigate this kind of obscurity. First specs, nocturnal and dependent. More someone else than ourselves Two someone else’s. But we expand, as we are meant to. Drawn into the blaze. Disoriented, completely other. And we change 1,000 times. Limbs stretch, voices emerge. Motion – a double edge sword. When we are small and soft you can hold vigil by ou