
Desert Crossroads at Dusk.
If we had thought
At this interim,
Where he plants
His graveled head
Lifts his back
And carves the sifted plain
To greet our tread,
That surety were
Merely the lengthened
Shadow of our sweetest dreams.
Then had each herself
Her own heart reprieved.
Whether her path into the darkness
Or the sinking fire led.
- Lona Gynt, 1989.

How the Artist considered the Tulip
It seems strange,
She did not paint
The voluptuous velvet shell,
Nor did she trace
The fimbriated lines
Of delicate leaves
Weaving in suspended air.
Rather,
She dared to pierce
With her brush
Into the very center
Of the beautiful creature,
Where muddy loam
Mixed with sunlight laden rain
To sculpt a fiery heart
Thrusting a blinding
Flash of color back to the
Cold blue sky of
Failing winter, crying out
In desperate measure:
Here I am, Pick me!
Oh, here I am,
Pick me.
- Lona Gynt. November 2015
But in that moment
When I craved
Your hands above
The casings of my heart,
You would not touch me there,
For my good,
Or who I am to you,
Or perhaps because you might be right,
And I may really need your love
More than the sweet embrace
Of affirmation.
I must confess…
In that moment
I Felt the crisp snapping of a stem
Leaving neither root nor branch
But only dessicated petals,
Pressed between the dusty pages
Of a lonely silent book.

Wash the whited frame.
I know this place,
Where young lovers meet,
And old friends
Sit quietly outside the gate.
Somewhere behind me,
Perhaps on the mantle,
Or the wall,
A stone face keeps vigilance.
Meting out each embrace,
Striking in the rise and fall.

Pain like a shingle
It simply just hurts like sin.
You’re feeling quite fine
While it hides in your spine
“Til it treks out a road to your skin.
On your poor dermatome
As it runs to get out to the air.
Soon you are yearning
For a day without burning
And the fight hardly even seems fair.
You can’t wear a good sweater
Cuz you itch and you scratch at the touch.
And the girl who confesses
To shoulderless dresses
Finds they don’t cover the red rash by much.
Is it give you a blister
Lined up like red little soldiers.
At first it’s just itchin’
“Til the whole crew does pitch in
In a file from your neck to your shoulders.
By scholars gold-star
From Aukland and London and Emory.
But this verse is a spell
To hope you are well,
And drive this plague far from our Memory.
