Each day I read poems
by authors whose language works 
its way like a foreign tongue
into my blood
and bones. Silently, growing
stronger, their rhythm clinks
around in this soul bag 
until I think it will burst. So, I plunge 
my hand into a sack of words,
feeling for the right ones, 
and cast them onto the page.
Like bone runes onto a stone 
table they clatter. My fingers dance 
across the letters. I read
 as they land, and weave
stories through their placement
until a picture forms
that you will hopefully swallow,
or view, like an oracle,
or even, a fortune cookie. 
                                ~Suzette Winona Summers

I want to tuck myself into all the memories
that shift me like sand 
in the waves under my feet
from the mundane to awe,
from the compact to the infinite: 
the smell of papaya or sugar cane wafting
on a warm wind; the clouds that look 
like mountains or mounds of cotton 
candy billowing higher, and their gusts 
reaching down to brush back 
my wild mane; the last push 
before the perfect release
of a newborn baby--the smell 
of their head, their wails of desire
diving into the depths of this
swallowing eternity. 

As I fold myself into the dough
of my life, I watch children
rise past my stature, and love
grows bigger than a marriage,
or a dream lost. Love,
the sea I am only now beginning
to fathom, swells and ebbs, 
and its tide carries me along 
deeper into its center-less space,
devouring me without
my noticing. 

Knead me
into your being, sweet love,
envelop me into your message
written in wrinkles on my skin,
tuck me into the wind-smelled sheets 
where I can raise my tattered sails and drift
higher on silver dreams, 
full of fresh bread, salty seas,
and the messiness of common adventure. 

~Suzette Winona Summers