after Dorothea Tanning's painting
Dark stalks of trees
are blossoming from the wilderness
of our pale, haze-like dreams. A staircase
leads us from sleep back into our bodies, where we
meet ourselves again, among the ghosts
of stories that survive in the far
edges of our minds. We
fall back
into the Arctic lands
that haunt our souls, a sky
studded with comets, where two
children are waiting
for daylight to spill over the mountains
amid the pale greeting of
snow to our warm hands.
"The Truth about Comets and Little Girls"
won First Place in the Young Adult
Division of the Festival 2007 Literary Awards
sponsored by on-the-town magazine.