Timothy Pilgrim


Novel dream

I’m trapped in a forested story —
scrub pine, stream, clearing. Jeep-loads
of vignettes churn by. A rodeo queen
circles them on horseback, texting.
Lurkers, likely ranchers, watch her,
don’t post a thing. I draw my Kindle,
fill it with verbs in passive voice, sidle
to meadow’s edge, ignite. The tale
catches fire, burns every page. 
My cursor senses heat from my fingers,
pulses in anticipation. It hopes
I will delete my past life.



Muse

She begins to begin, swirls in,
dances past, windhoves in mist,
elusive, promises magic  — again.

A mistral, she shuns whiskey, 
dope, triggering town,
ceremonial smoke. Never comes

the same way twice. Wheels in,
gyres, rides me like a rough draft.
Whispers, make the ending iambic.



Lithe
 
In my dream, a mime air-draws bowls,
pours in colors equally. I nod, agree —
she speaks low, accompanies me

past mountain spring, pooled, pent up,
ready to flow. Downstream, a meadow, 
lupine-lush, also daisies, cosmos,

violet, gold, blue. We lie among them, 
me, white, she, brown, eager, lithe —
a clear sign it’s time to bloom.

Timothy Pilgrim, a U.S. Pacific Northwest poet, has a few hundred acceptances from U.S. journals such as Seattle Review, Windfall, and Santa Ana River Review, and international journals such as Windsor Review and Toasted Cheese in Canada, and Otoliths in Australia. He is the author of Seduced by metaphor (2021).

 
 

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