There is a softness to silence
like the edges of water meeting air
when you find it
you slip in
cool lakes of stillness
Silence is a wall when you hit it hard
like ice punching your stomach
when you land wrong off the high dive
and sink
rising bubbles  
thoughts
tickle up your lips and rise into fields of lower pressure
In the space
where the cool rush of blood pounds the drum
like rock slides or avalanches that turn as the seasons do
to feel is a comfort from the still
as a touch seems something from nothing
such fire
such desire
is not captured
in any reality

I guess it takes a long time to heal
more than I had thought before
and dreams are less distant island destinations
than they are
sailboats
which take me across the waves
in the comforting arms of a lover
with the imagined light of candles on her skin..
she moves in
shadows of reality where she never left

Tonight, I write
like I am on my knees again, begging..
Even though I swore I'd never do that again
Because its never enough
I feel hands on my skin
holding me like a statue, like I was something unchanging
fragile
I wish they would just rip it off
the skin that holds me together
and keeps me prisoner
and maybe that would be enough
reach into my chest and caress my heart still beating
tonight I'm begging anyone who can really hear me at all
to somehow give it back to me
With more than just a touch...
because the words don't let me go anymore
they flutter away like raindrops
no one gives them back..

Alone, I write the things I should have said to you
Because my throat feels like the precipice of a waterfall
And what traverses my lips will fall
Spiraling off into the rivers and the sea
The words which hung like swirling pools holding plants and small fish
given inertia
would tumble out away from control of myself
and I might tell you the whole truth
you might learn that I loved you
not for any purpose or reason
any more than the reason things from high places fall down
because of the way
that love is to me
a feeling
and you inspire me
to dream of fantastic things
and in you there is a spring of hope
I fear to lose you to the unstoppable motions of the truth
so often I find that dreams are just so
stories

I saw her across the street, blonde hair,
bronze summer skin long legs
she wore her crooked glasses and her smile
A black jacket and blue jeans
ripped at the knees by natural causes
Some people just glow in any weather,
I think that when the sunshine gets spilled on them they never let it go.
long fingers
hold science fiction books like stray puppies
When she speaks
Her hands move with a life of their own, they spin worlds
like grandmothers spin tapestries,
she takes the fabric of the time she passes through and makes it a masterpiece.
In my mind she is a time traveler
She's a 1920's jazz singer, a wartime hero, a ballroom dancer, an astronaut
She believes in a better world and she is it
see it in her eyes
Cherry jubilee ice-cream in her hand offered to me
I can't help but grin.
Instinctual reaction, like you squint your eyes in a spotlight.

I'm sad because she'll never see me
how I see her
as sunshine
I can't hold her but
I don't know how to let her go

Walking around town together
Musician on the park bench
notes of an acoustic guitar
beads of water on her skin
and the wind kicks up,
the snowflakes don't settle
but dance
like dust motes who found salvation.
Minarets who touch the music we can't hear
speak it through a motion and a whisper
brush across the pavement and the leaves
I feel them touch me
body and soul
I
maybe, just for a moment am the wind.
Gale in from the Pacific,
race over the green valleys,
batter the blue tinged purple mountains of the west,
through the golden motes and sunbeams of late evening
caress shivering aspens and high mountain pines
All the way until I reach my outstretched fingers,
and slip right through.
Much like you, my darling.

Cold autumn day, smells of firewood in the air,
Little diamond snowflakes sparkle down to the earth.
As they land they wink out of existence as if they never were.
Crystal spires on a micro scale lost to the heat of the moment.
I watch the tops of my tennis shoes as I walk towards the field.
They drift in and out of my vision
with their scuffed toes and red dusted fabric.
Side walk cracks are too far apart for a decent rhythm but
the sky is a painting.
People don't look up enough to see.
Grey steel and blue forges work on the masterpieces
meant to fade into your fingertips
in an ocean up above.

Lost song so long
In between walls and over top mountains
Happy when you're free
Happy but not me
Courage that tempts you to reach out and take her
hand by the tips of fingers which
could play the piano and curve about saxophones
if only you let
them
touch
Pretty words from the annexes of the libraries
stand up at attention in the main hallways of mind
when you see her face and you wander
through the rooms where you paint her naked on the
floor
holding the pages of the dreams you wrote for her
Speak a sentence and you feel your lips move
make the words of the sound but
there's no touching the ground
And images unbidden of the stories you tell yourself don't flicker but flare
the licks of the campfire redder than rose on her skin
the piano in the main room of your seaside apartment
the echoes of the music that hold my soul like the hands of a lover
better than any lover could
The grey sky is noticed and rain falls above us
stalled still in the headlights of cars  like they don't know
And time doesn't know us
But oh, the places it shows us
And in and out of time in the backrooms of my mind
Never shall I live the thousand dreams I dream
But if I could have just one..