Tag: Verse

Turn every timepiece back
to 5 minutes before.
Fix every star in place
and close up all the doors.

Put away the ticking objects;
cover the sundials and the charts.
Hold back the tide and tie up the wind;
let nothing stir or start.

Halt all the moving shadows
and pin them on each window sill.
Rob every measured minute
to make this place stand still.

Prepare with him the table,
and when all is arranged and done,
spread out the memory boxes
and open every one.

From across the now worn surface,
from across this field of time,
from across his unfolding story
that lays across the markers of mine;

From the medley of past remembrance
spreading out before our hands,
let these echoes and images rise up;
take us back to where it all began.

In this moment of return,
in this field of yesterday,
I will carry him high on my shoulders,
while all time and haste give way.

I will read him untold stories;
I will sing him unsung songs;
recite once forgotten poetry;
paint masterworks undrawn,
and on ancient mariners maps
show him where he will always belong.

I will show him faded photographs
from original cardboard boxes,
that mark times passing glimpses
in picture frames and lockets;
penciled notations of heritage
and engraved family pocket watches.

Then reveal the gentle wisdom
my father placed in me,
for such a time and calling
on such a journey’s eve.

Of kindred bonds and pledges
woven deep within the core
of a tapestry of legacies,
lying on this threshold floor,
pointing to our place within it,
just inside the outer door.

All this to fill his pockets
with all that matters most,
pausing at this gateway,
to guide and hold him close.

Prepare for him now this journey
with maps and almanacs,
and among all such provisions,
one map to lead him back.

Commit to memory his fingerprints;
know by heart the sound of his steps;
standing with him on this tapestry
of then and now and next.

Hold him still one minute longer;
hold him close one minute more,
while the world speeds ever faster
just outside the outer door.

Reach deep across the years;
find him here in this embrace,
where he always was and will be,
and bring him home again to this place.

Then open again the shutters;
swing wide the outer door;
pin wings to every footstep,
and standing on the threshold floor,
lay my arms across his shoulders,
and kiss his cheek once more.

Let every moment speak,
rising up through all the years;
leave nothing left unsaid;
tell him everything that’s dear,
till all I am goes with him,
and all he is stays here.

We live on the crust of the earth
that is constantly heaving
and flowing and shifting,
and forgetting us.

Our tracks and monuments and boundaries;
our wonders and forevers;
are built on dust and wind,
one molecule at a time.

Like our hand in the river,
we are a great experiment
in denial and hope;
of loving people
who love others,
..who love others.

We are a migrant;
an explorer and refugee;
a homeland of leavers.

We are a wave,
that believes it is the water,
that believes it is the wave.

We are in constant motion,
and the motion covers us
and fills us,
and then moves on
and betrays us
to a promise
only one of us made.

Time pushes
and pulls us
and leaves us behind,
with not even an answer
for this
never-ending sweeping away.

What happens to all that was meant to stay,
in this place that so easily lets go;
like great cities
carefully built to be timeless
before slipping beneath the desert?

What happens when a book is dust?
Where do the letters go,
in neat heaps and piles,
swept away with the slightest breath?

Are they free again,
at last?
Do they no longer belong to anyone?
Do they belong to everyone?

Do they mix and move and bend
in ancient precision,
and then settle back down into
some kind of meaning?

Or do they wait,
uncertain of such obligations?

And where are all the love letters,
tear and lip stained,
mingling
in what was, and is, and is becoming?

Do they crumble in pairs,
to surrender and fall together?
Do they somehow catch the scent
of their intimate purpose?

And where am I?
Where are you;
when we swirl
in this same release?

Will we still belong to each other?
Will we belong to no one?
or perhaps
everyone?

Like our hand in the river;
in denial and hope,
of loving someone,
who loves someone,
..who loves someone.

She said there’s no poetry
in the dark.
It seeps out in pieces
and handfuls
that lay scattered across the top of the world,
seeking refuge
in the order of things,
that pins a sliver of the dawn
in every window.

But here,
where the shadow meets the haze,
their fingers entwine
in intimate familiarity,
and whisper secrets for all of us to hear.

Down here
….in the row,
next to the line.
I try to catch your eye.
I’m breathing differently
….than those in back of me.
I’m standing differently
….than those in front of me.
Down here;
down here in the row,
….next to the line.

We shared an argument
all through the night,
on who was the intruder
and who was the guest;
who brought the soul
and who brought the flesh.

Did you think
you were Aphrodite,
entering this court room
armed with only your breasts?

Such shallow inconveniences,
slyly borrowed from some copycat vision,
have no place or weight in this challenge,
and leave no spoils to justify the quest.

Instead,
let’s linger awhile longer
with this innocent question,
of who is the sinner
and who is the blessed.

You’re like a warm rush past my ear,
..just out of sight;
faint whispers and murmers mixing,
..just out of range;
some thick blurred membrane that marks here
from there,
pressing lightly against my shoulder,
once again.

These unexpected moments
that poke holes in other thoughts,
have no rhyme or reason.

They enter unannounced,
with paid receipts,
and claim attention;
laying images out on the coffee table,
and playing familiar music.

At times,
each sits on stage alone,
unconcerned with clocks,
as it pours into seconds and minutes.

Still, the rules are obeyed;
as they leave with no more than they came;
passing ordinary distance in the hall,
hurrying to settle back in,
once again.

Life pushes us through each day,
and pulls us from the next,
dropping changes like tokens.

At times,
I wonder what life you’re living out,
on a path on the other side of a mountain.

I heard you could calculate the night’s temperature
by the chirps of a cricket;
the time for gathering sap
by the cycles of the moon,
and foretell the future
by the undulating of birds.
Ancient soothsayers,
squawking for fish in the surf.

How often we give up our power
and place
to the conspiracies of the world around us;
instilling the perplexing and mysterious
with the assurance of scales, patterns, & water clocks;
rendering in simple complexity
all of what nature has conjured up
after eons of trial and error,
settling finally into what works best,
for now.

All our chronicles of meaning,
patchworked in codes and formulas for the ages;
relentless,
and unprepared
for the shift in chromosomes;
in currents;
and stars.

Reality hangs kindly
on the limbs of bare trees;
truth-tellers once covered in leaves,
slowly baring their souls;
when gravity and the moon
pull away all the soft color
that’s been getting all the attention;
when they lean
into each other,
stretching,
moving with reptile accuracy
into intimate places,
left open it seems
for this purpose.

You can pick out those that love each other
..most.
They stroke,
dance,
and persuade;
sometimes swaying together,
undulating with practiced
….agreement;
sometimes,
slowly,
growing into each other’s bones.
Who could doubt their promise?

These naked embraces
leave traces;
pleaded offerings,
molded acceptance;
signatures
penned in each other’s skin.

Shared favors in the spring,
richly laced
through each others fingers;
enfolding each other
below the soil & rock,
until the lifelines lie
and trick themselves
into not knowing their own beginning;
giving and given,
too far to say who’s is who’s;
until one loses it’s spring,
and settles quietly
into giving no more.

Then the sunlight lays differently.
The shadows lose their way.
The seasons
shift,
through a stiffly framed embrace.
Each touch,
hunted by the living,
stroking the air
remembering,
reaching;
waiting
with well-practiced grace;
summoning life from the ground,
and only slowly
growing into the space left behind.

It’s not true, you know,
that the oak and the cypress
avoid each other’s shadow.
Trees live nestled up into each other;
touching,
sharing the same rain,
the same sun,
the same wind.

When a tree is alone it suffers;
left to only love the sky.

The table sits empty.
Chairs all stand in place.
Sun streams across the room.

Unused questions sit stiff
behind closed glass doors

Outside the street still sounds
like it had us;
caught like loose magazines
spinning in the rush,
struggling to keep our place in the crowd.
You-said I’m only passing by,
I said well I’m just..passing through.

I recognized you
first, I think,
just before the moment cracked open
a sliver of time for dealing in mysteries;
loose connections to familiar places;
intimate glimpses of anything next,
as the moment undressed.

There was a taste in the air.

And then the stage light pans
to this scene of chance,
left to wander in the still life portrait;
pinned like a butterfly;
shivering on the light post,
in black and white.

Where we stand in place;
in the territory of memories;
in the company of yes, and maybe, and if;
as we lean in almost too close to be true; .
Where we whisper, like infiltrators,
as each one of us will confess,
that you were only passing by,
and I was just..passing through.