Breath~ By t.m. thomson

The field we plow
under a cloud-heavy
sky is rowed and ripe
with broken toys--
baby doll heads
with missing eyes
Barbies from the chest up
hair impossibly-tangled
an arm here & there
cracked tops
chipped marbles
the grungy seat of a tricycle
torn tassels from ballet days.

That’s one truth.

Here’s another--
you can still plant
in this field of fragments
& filth.

Kneel and drop seeds--
magnolia zinnia dianthus
allium whatever--
into the empty heads & torsos
turn the tricycle seat upside down
& sow something soft & low into it
like moss or even the plainest
of grass.
Throw marble & tassel on top
for adornment.

Make use of the shattered
& severed & collapsed--
this is breath.


~inspired by Lisa Lach-Nielsen’s “Gardening”


Author Bio:
t.m. thomson has been in love with poetry since she was very young; her first poem was about colors. She draws much of her poetic inspiration from nature and art, both reality and artifice. Often poems occur to her while she takes walks or while her hands are immersed in soil. She refers to herself not as a “gardener,” but rather as a “player in mud.” Her work has most recently appeared in Wild Roof Journal and Whispering Prairie Press: Kansas City Voices and will be featured in Blue Ash Review and mutiny! magazine in the upcoming months. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards, and she is the co-author of Frame and Mount the Sky, a book of ekphrastic poetry, and author of Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019). She has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWrite