Quivers of Blue Sage

Quivers of Blue Sage Basement shelves hold canned peaches under the sideboard's thin plates, gold and rose. A library room keeps tomes, gray notes and a globe. If I curve up the stairs, flowers fade and then stain bedroom walls; old voices unfold flaccid quilts for naps, or better: card table tents for a dark cube-like room sealed to underexpose slammed oak doors, thickening walls. Blood flows back of my throat; white roses wave in windows; drawn veins trail down stairs past wired chicken coop; choppy scale notes block major coagulating notes of cut grass. I tear away, look for clear window panes to the ground, no stairs, plan blue tulips for blooming under skylights, framing crows caught up in roseclouded sunsets denying all walls. Blue echoes on canvas, as thin walls might tremble under thunder; high notes quiver in spring sage, but climbing rose thorns hone their blue-black likeness, grasp for footing on this house I find. Underneath white rugs, red carpets reveal stairs, no end up, no end down, untold stairs. I flee to noon-sun adobe walls, blue-tiled floors, a patio under tube-thick light where green parrots sing notes ofbalance, live on my shoulders for years, endless years. At dawn's glow, we rise, heed mortar lines, right angles, rise to broken glass spikes topping the stairs, bloody wings, claws, breasts insisting for wanting to drop down outside the wall 52 to come to a house, opaque - dirge notes a minor: light is hidden underground . A smear of rose rounds the round walls. Forgotten stairs slow step to tried notes. Brown bats follow for hanging under. Sandra Gail Teichmann 53 ...