Music Box

The heart is like

a

music box.

anita pelayo rivera les dames d'abord

Every time you open it

a note 

chimes out

and another and then another

until you realize

that all the tuned teeth plucking against

a cold

steel plate

harmonize into a single

life's song.

anita pelayo rivera les dames d'abord

Keep your music box open

and

never lock it

because something unexpected can happen:

an ordinary 

scientific phenomenon

anita pelayo rivera les dames d'abord

can become a unicorn horn

anita pelayo rivera les dames d'abord

anita pelayo rivera les dames d'abord

that reaches up and out 

to find

life
 
while dreams lay buried

under the spell of winter's stillness.

Day Light Savings

How beautifully the snow has piled
monuments over the little tribes of boxwood.
How slowly ghosts of smoke from the chimney
shadow calligraphy over the trackless spread


while the arbor vitae
flap their lacy sleeves
as a rustle of red
feathers out, slicing the air with mist.


In rows on the gutters
icicles suspend 
like a collection of daggers 
but the dogwood's branches on the south side


hold hostage a few glassy blades
lodged in a failed attempt
to escape
and crack the code of winter.


My shadow halts
over scored layers of long months
to prevent this sacred moment 
from shattering


but more joyful than my song of silence
is promise keeping itself
in random clashes of still life
plummeting to the iron window boxes


as I hear March drip away. 

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Text by Anita Rivera©