Confessional Water

Tarnished mind calloused soul

Watercolor by Miranda Carson

death saddles my shadowed dreams.

Barren walls where photos lived

burned in russet glows of ash and wood.

*

I long for yellowed aspen 

scent of smoke and a dram of rye.

Waters glossed in diamonds morning dew 

where shadows stretch and river bends,

in braided streams reverie.

Here dry flies waltzed over quilted lupine fields.

Confessing our sins with each cast,

these lives of broken bones and loose change.