Receding

I've swallowed words for months,
but now they're burning in my throat,
and now the wind surprises,
     dropping
                hope.

A friend sits close for
             stroke,
             soul mate of fear.
             She sits too close.

Last night
                I missed the stun of moon.
But in a way, in your sway, found a different glow.

In your arms,
                              my heart slows next to your scent,
even as my mind's
bent on instinct of escape.

Because love is a fugitive, covering her tracks
           and this
            time,
with luck of rain.

So, now, seems you're the only one who knows the way.
                                                                               Still, I'm stilling breath and biding time,
waiting on a plan that needs not need.

Because when it's black
                  the forest fairies swirl
glutinous and brazen, leaning into whisper.

 And they sound like you.

Lying in a mess of limbs,
               my own rebel,
then surrender somewhere above my head.

Your hand knows the way to mine,
          and I can almost believe then, when, quick,
                it flies like night-loving fluttering bright to light,
                     latches, intertwines.

Creature of the wild-wood, you blend, and so then, I do, too.

A flash flickers against the back of my neck
and you reach over and slowly, unriddle what aches,
                                   so when, then, your eyes are right above mine,
                                                                               I almost think you see.
I am on the edge
        of answer
when I arrive and too, when four words are made three,
but there in the center I forget the turn.

It's only, later, in paler light of city, that I find complexity in conclusion.
                     
The Sunday Whirl

The Artist and The Girl

He must have painted her picture a million
                            times, a million ways.
Depicted
                                   stories,
                                   scenes,
with brush stroke,
                                   shadows.
This gypsy woman,
                                   moving so,
                                   so still
untainted.

Against
backdrops both
           of
           ordinary nature and locale, exotic,
                                          likenesses
                                                                        so alive in mind
found form and placement.

Flattered, in frock of floral, and perched on park bench,
                                                 perhaps in
                    Paris;
                          sweetly apron clad in
kitchen, though never barefoot;
                                       a portrait in part with
 taunting version of a Mona Lisa Smile;
 too, in
     nudity and length, the prior only he could see, the former, blanketed, so teasing;
          in only tetrad color scheme and then pastels that pardoned actuality;
 in oil on canvas, in a gallery on Main,
                       she stares out
with elbows on knees
hands on face,
rump on the front steps
in the front yard
in the forefront of his imagination,
                                    and the green grass
                                                              sprawls
                                                                  and a
Midwest Rockwellesque house they never owned looms behind.
Even slouched,
                he drew her
            taller
            than she was.
This, he thinks, he'd keep for self, and had they owned that house, he'd hang above the mantle.
   He fondly named it, "Harriet."
Sketched in solitude and also
             drawn amongst the
crowd, always younger than she must have been
                                                                  by now.
In one she stands against testaceous wall so that
            the bright of locks
would shimmer as a halo.
Her hair, in this, he glazed in gold

really her hair was straw like

and
all the beauty he conceived, perceived and sold- a lie-
romanticized, or in terms, less contrived-
       a sham.

This, is what the woman thought, as she scrutinized what she knew was meant to be her image.
Woman,
      mortal,
with bohemian heart is all

so to set things
right,
she chose language instead of
        hues, sentences in place of
              strokes.
With blank page and lit then snuffed out cigarette, black
                                     coffee on a desk in an aging house no younger than
                                                                                                            the town
she'd never left,
she began to write,
erasing any superfluity,
    succinct instead as suicide.  She willed words
           into strict formation and knocked them into
                 sense whenever needed.  She paused once to take
off socks and rub her feet and many times she stopped, rereading, mulling over details,
                                 frowning, and checking for any error.
                                                       Chill of fact
rounded
air
even as plot intrigued.
Hours later she was shocked to find she'd hit upon his theme.
She could see it
      now,
unveiled this way in type.
                            Tired by the truth, she abandoned project, went outside, or rather, first to hallway, locking
the door behind her, descended the stairs of her apartment dwelling.
Rump on curb, she placed her
hands on face,
rested elbows on her knees
and watched the bustle of the city.
She felt smaller here but older.

The baby kicked inside her, eager to arrive.

She wondered, as she listened to din of traffic, how long it must have been since she had seen him.
She noticed not the thunder so though the spill of rain surprised, she stayed.
She imagined the water color hanging he'd left with her now dripping, saw the happiness he'd created fading.
She knew she couldn't, wouldn't ever be with him again.
She wished at least to see him just once more.

And had it been just three quarters of one year, since she'd seen him last, she might have soon seen him in the likeness of the child coming.

She sighed.
It had been much, much longer than just three quarters of one year.
                       

                               

Understanding

Such fascination found,
in those small, colored orbs,
in the plink each made
when dropped upon another,
glass inside of glass,
               their novel magnitude, illusion.

They appeared to float.

All mere picture.

I had forgotten the struggle,
                  the hands at
war,
disturbance
           and its cause,
recalled not,
                 the crash spill
of anger at
    a
sudden realization of the
    disparity of what is and
                      what is wanted.

My own lack of memory seems ironic even now,
juxtaposed with
    the girl of then,
who, no more than I,
could grasp the chasm of time.

Rara Avis

Just


     the swirl of her ponytail, perfectly
                             positioned, painstakingly
centered


 careless strands cascading just so
     teasing the
back of her neck
  and his mind.

He could
taste her
or imagined he could.  Craved
        her notice.  Her figure, poised attentive, undimmed, juxtaposed with the relative blur of all others in the room

and the fidgety
shuffling of peers,
the drone of the
schoolmaster lecturing on dimensions, insignificant hum
but her soft
shifting
he heard,
 his heartbeat all that vied for attention, audible witness of his lust, and
 her composition all he'd managed to memorize
                     thus far this year, her nimble
                                                            limbs
at play at gym,
her regal movement through
  the hallways.


                   So, powerless, when at last such substance
                     of rapture stood
before him, anticipation palpable.  She cocked
           her
           head, not unkindly.  He cleared his throat,
                        too aware of sticky palms,
 willed
                                 words
 that would not come.

The Mag

The Sunday Whirl

I Guess

I said, I'd changed,
and now,
I'm not
  so sure, because there I went
with
                             too many words,
                             too much thought.
I could blame it on too many years
    of silence,
but you'd suspect the
                          truth,
and I suppose my declaration came, anyway,
                                   as no wonder.  So,
                                                    I could have kept it
                                                    in,
held back all
sentiment,
feigned less regard,
but seasons
       more could
                come and go, time continue pass,
                                                             and still my mind
would chant,
                   the same old, age old
fact
of
love.
And
if I
could,
I wouldn't
                         talk to you this way,
title you every turn.
                              I'd
speak grander of the air, work out
                                          passion flowering
                                                 as it does at
                                                       times.
        I'd
stop nursing the taste
   of the last conversation.
                                  I'd let it be
                                              but I guess I haven't changed.

Hell To Pay

We all sought gold,
           sifted through what
       all was fertile.
                      And in the
                           human landscape waste,
                                  saw vision; a breeding ground of yielding hearts
                   and temptation of possession.

Now ransacked and
                       deserted,
                        disconnected, empathy's closed up shop,
                                                                          disfigured gift with barbed
                                                                                                      wire fencing.
                                                                                                       And by greed masking as need, demand with no
supply,
we've peddled what was not for sale, we've corrupted soul, wasted
                                                 season upon
                                                 season of
plenty, soaked up scandal while the
flesh of earth thirsted and now our efforts of restoration,
futile.
We, the horror that we imagine.  All signals
                          out
                          of range and in haste to slacken
                                   guilt, we say we have
no idea what caused the shift, the current
      degradation, and we're wilting,
                 anchored to denial.  The heat prickles, peeling
                         off every layer of reason,
promising ruin.
                                                                        There will be hell to pay.