by Angela M. Brommel

I ruminate.
I have three cards addressed to you
another purchased last week
while carrying the thoughts and letters with me.
One thing about timelessness is the tension
between the ever-present and the never-present.
Isn’t it always the moment before the song,
the moment between resilient and yielding?

____________________

I have no ability to dance
yet when only concentrating on the breath
I have been led across the room effortlessly.

______________________

We have layers of tracks telling our story
harmonies that just occur, while
mathematic–are also strangely perfect.

__________________________

All this jumbled straight to the page,
unstructured, which is never an option I choose.

Today I did.

________________________

I took all my summer wages to the backyard. Summer money, grocery money, early morning until dusk. I spent a month, sometimes digging into negligible amounts of desert dust to carve out roots no longer needed. Isn’t this it too? The dark & the quiet, the patience to wait it out? I yearned for a Chaste Tree, and planted it for a favored view. Now I finally realize the absurdity of loving a tree that will unfailingly grow 25 feet tall in a tiny corner plot.

Angela M. Brommel is a Nevada writer with Iowa roots. She holds an MA in Theatre from the University of Northern Iowa, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her poetry has appeared in Vapid Kitten, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Now Culture and is forthcoming in The North American Review. She currently teaches Humanities and Women’s Studies at Nevada State College.