Your thumb a deep oval
at the base of my neck, still smoothing
fingers snake and entrap coils of my hair.
My love my person my someone
he presses so gently as we burn
but to freeze for a moment,
eyes two parallel solar lamps.
Then groan, holding onto his head
as we, in slow motion, escape.

First toes, then knees absorbing,
Lap, lapping.
Arms in motion,
hands still gripping as I stoop and
my board finds her ocean cradle.
Hands on deck.
Wade out, shuffle smooth as
my cool clear sanity rises up from
the earth and caresses my chest, wet.
Toes and arms again
but this time shoulders too
and I am up, out, on
laying on.
Pressed panini --
      cool cheese wedge melting into steaming cut.
But peel kneel bend branch
and in a moment I am
so UP
reaching up, balancing up, up, up,
then scoop, paddle plunging
gurgling slurp of drink rattles chest.
Water for this thirst.
Cold compress for the earth.

Inhale.  Interlock
legs toes eyes tongues
curl
arms hair lips necks.
Beat beat.
Beat beat, beat beat.
Quickening, stiffening,
plunging, confessing
; gasp ;
am nothing
but a milky white shape
as I lay myself down
in the dark.
Exhale.

How selfish are my ambitions
and trivial my thoughts.

The trees never ask,
they only give.
Holding the air, like a lover --
                                          sweet.

Your smell inhabits my heart
and your spirit walks beside me.
You never contained this capacity to love so sweetly.

Nature has an intimacy within itself
that lovers could only ever hope to hold.

I understand why a poet would live
                  apart from man,
but apart from nature?
This I could never fathom,
wouldn't
hope to understand.

Often, I feel that I live between the moments in which I hear the sound of gravel and grit beneath my shoes.
Or the stirring silent feeling of moist earth beneath the soles of my soul.

All my thoughts in their garments -- they clamor for attention.
They clatter and cluster and craze the inner cupboards of my head.

But the trees and the wind --
  if I stop for but a moment and wipe away the wimperings...
            I hear sweet and solemn
            the secrets of the world.
          Most remain chaste in their mysteries;
          they bear no qualm, yet not a reason
          to speak to someone as present and passing,
                                             so here and not yet there,
                             someone...so like me.

How is it that two people could dash at each other and just as quickly veer apart
like a pair of magnets, reversed upon contact?

I'd say that the feeling is unique, but it has been tried on by so many others.
The piece that has threatened to puzzle me is: how long must I wear this garment?
Will it suffocate me till it tatters to rags, and I too am ragged and old?
Or will I only wear it for special occasions --
like a painter putting on old clothes?
If I could wear you again,
would it come back fresh?
The knowledge and realization that life -- this formulated life that we are programmed to live is but a dream.
Would I stop with you again?

I am on a fast-moving train and I can't get off.  If I did, my life -- as I have planned it out -- would fall to pieces.  But would a new path unveil itself?  A road strewn with garbage and nights slept in uncertainty, yes.
But perhaps an alternate life that I secretly want but am too afraid to accept.

But no, this will never happen.
Sometimes if you stay in one place too long, disgust begins to bloom like mold.

Why is creativity like the sea
crashing and retreating into infinity?

Oh, if it were constant.
But what is constance?
    Unlike the sky with its everchanging colors and moods.
    Unlike the trees --
     their leaves, they change
      roots digging
       bark peeling, healing.
    Unlike the beasts --
     birthing and dying,
      evolving and migrating.
    Unlike people --
      they grow, they sink,
       their hearts become tattered,
        their bodies defeat themselves.

If only I were constant.

But I am as floating as last year's love.  A love so craved -- a love we ran for and caught up with.
But we ran too fast; our breaths dashed, our ankles cracked.
You asked me why I ran, and now I say to you --
                           why don't you?

I wrapped my hands up in your hair
to feel the pulse - your heat, your beat.
I reach again
feel naught but air:
the essence of a love,
retreat.

Often do I venture back,
roam into an abandoned past.
Dis-embalm these memories true,
packed on ice
yet damp with dew.

Cat treads heavy the surface of heart,
imprints
      indenting,
              g,         d
            n             e
           i                 s
         d                   c
        n                      e
       e                         n
     c                             d
   s                                i
a                                   n
                                       g,
scarring my thoughts, my rhythm,
my whole.
Shifting my sacrum,
sheathing my soul.

Doggedly I trail behind
with a twisted eraser
      just "try the eraser"
      you said with a smirk.
But still I reach and I reach and I reach
rapt in your attentions as a wave to a beach.

There is a grain of sand in my eye
that can't be washed away.
Salt, fresh, spring
they all caught her.
But I've tried every type of water.

Still you persist,
a rotting orange's mist.

I allowed you to come; I also let you leave.
I remember with crude clarity
what happened in between.

Go, my love you let.
Go, your love I let.
The only question now I have:
Why then can't I forget?

Why is it only green near the top?

She has forgotten her
roots
her hopes
her beauty.

She has become what they see,
and no more than that.

What sweetness have you
meekly smiling?

a
       sweetness,
a
       promise,

a
       love?

Dear Emily,

Tell me
          Tell me
                     How you sucked t he marrow out of life
                     from your transparent cave.
                    while  I have been shriveled dry.
           Can't think
                     breathe
                     feel
                     touch
                     see
                     drink the Earth.
I have one foot on the ground and one in the car.
My senses are numb unless both feet find
soil, grass and greenery.
             Tell me
                       Tell me
                                            how you pinpointed the essence of man
                                                                               the essence of this earth.
                                             without running the race yourself?
                                                                               (at least once?)

Life, I believe is a journey.
It is a lesson never complete.
Just when you think a sequence is over,
you realize that it is still in motion,
was there all along
and will always be there.
                  I think what I loved most about him
                  was something he made me find inside myself.
                  Something that was always there
                  and still is here.
                  Something infinite.
                  Something fusia and raspberry
                  vivid green
                  and cracked in stone.
                  Something caged
                  yet open to the sky.
Trees can whisper solitude
and roses simper sweetness.
It takes a willing heart
and a good pair of shoes
to learn their wise
and timeless message.
                                    Melt this numbness.
                                    Park my car forever
                                    and stir my feet
                                    through grass and
                                    gravel and damp
                                    earth and road and
                                    every path till my
                                    heart stops and my
                                    breath runs
                                    out.

My heart is smiling tonight.
But my soul is wondering at the light
splitting through the window
like splinters.

I could sink to the bottom of the ocean
if but to drink in your effervescent eyes.
I couldn't sleep at the bottom of the ocean
without your love to rest my head;
So swim close, love, in the land of the dead.

And if someday you decide to go,
just know
I'll be swimming in your body -
a fish that cannot be retrieved.
And if someday you have to go,
just know
that I'll be swimming in your body -
a fish that could never bleed.

The crickets echo the still-less thoughts
fluttering 'round my head.
The evening catalyst I never know to expect
but always dully dread.
Yet when nighttime whispers her quiet hush,
my thoughts spread wing, take flight.
For it's then I hear your footsteps close,
your nearness blankets sight.

I am a dandelion.
I pushed you and your petals out on the breeze
to drink of the Earth and Sun.
But you came floating back to me,
all your shifting features frozen, undone.
Why do you eat here, drinking the juice of your past?
Your lifetime is short, your blooming colors craving winds.
Hurry out, little seed;
make your essence last.

My gravel heart shakes in the wake of your steps,
beating me night and day.
Your claws dug
deep
deep
deep
through layers of
sand and
shell and
stubborn rock
to the core of smooth and silent water.

It began with a ripple and then with a wave;
how could I have known my life would never be the same?

You dug your way out
like you always, always do.
But my heart still churns churns churns.
You drained me of salt;
pebbles that float there
now sink

and they burn as they dip.

There's a little sparrow in my heart -
      he's fluttering around.
He hears the world outside my body -
      he's hushing at the sound
of sweet whisperings and happenings and murmurings
      and untold endings...
who told him when to grow?

He's scratching at the walls -
      his beak a twist in knots;
He must break free his bondage -
      before his spirit rots.
Fly, little bird!  Fly and free your soul!
Throw yourself asunder
before you get too old.

But, ah.
My love, he waits,
his hands are cupped
to catch the little sparrow.
That sparrow never saw but felt
his freedom
by an arrow.

Surly snipers slink
stealthily, silently, sure.
Soon someone shot, dead.

I follow you close.
No eyes, just heart till the day
Lemmings pirouette.

Selective mates.
Bugs' unconcern manifests;
Eagles dwindle, die.