While you were gone I fell asleep under a rim
Of solar flares which later brought on
phosphorescent insects belting upward.

While you were gone I came slightly unraveled like the
Dine rug created by a shuttle flying across the loom
It must survive with the blessing of the orb weavers
who proliferate on the sky island, a river
within a stream.

While you were gone I dwelt among petroglyphic figures
and scrubbed the steppes of the Creatrix
to prepare for her emergence at moonset and floated out
grazing on pollen and digesting the crumbs of grief
I had broken up on that trail while walking backwards
yet upwards along that secret pyramid of the north
chrysalis among the grasses, weaving.

[Amy Trussell is the author of six volumes of poetry, including two collaborations with A. di Michele, Ungulations (Surreigonal Press, 2010, Slidell LA) and Devil Lee (Semi Quasi Press, Media PA 2008), as well as The Painted Tongue Flowers, with paintings by Krista Lynn Brown, (Deva Luna Press, 2010, Santa Rosa), and others. Venues for her dance choreographed to poetry have included Loyola University, New Orleans, The Deep Ecology Conference at Fort Mason, San Francisco, and The Dancing Poetry Festival in San Francisco. She is a mother, a former doula, and a cancer survivor.]