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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.