So still she lies
Sleeping.
A cold room
Cold thoughts.  
Under cover of cotton and linen.        

A cold lonely wind
Cries outside
Longing to find solace
In the warmth of our home
But finding only that it devourers
By its own devices
What it so desperately desires.

Pain in my brow
Forged with hers.
Sharing breaks
Up the pain--
Comfort of depression's transitory end.

Why do you hurt the ones you love
When you want only peace?
A lover of the land?
Must plough the earth for yield
Break the ground in fury
To prepare it for seed.

This pain awaits our company
Like a bottle to the drunkard          
Or a needle to the ******.

Comfort is pain
Pain is comfort

In this violent serenity
As the calm peaceful sea
?Can in one moment  
Turn into a tumultuous gale.

Is love for the using
Can a person justify
Putting lines of age on the face
And gray hairs on the head
Of the one they love?

So many carry this burden.
Love shares common ground--
Seasons for ploughing and planting
And harvest,
The season of closure.?

So still she lies beside me.?
A cold room
Warmer thoughts.?
Under cover of cotton and linen.

Under cover of compassion
And understanding.

         --Daniel Irwin Tucker

You are an artifact, chiseled alabaster,
       I am just molded plaster of Paris,
You remain rich shiny white,
      irrespective of seasonal changes,
I need frequent  involvement of hands
      that know their craft well,
to be seen as an object of art, that barely survives,
    but still brittle, would easily turn to dust.
Men and women are different, inside out
    I was told, I see it myself now and delighted!
Over and over again I ask you to be aware of
      the limitations that tie me down and forgive
but you won't accept, go on with your life quietly
       caring so much to keep my sinking heart buoyant.

Her loneliness wears maroon,
                 I am aware," to her yin, my yang,"
mine in deep purple echoes,
                the density that's her, in my presence.
On an island of her own, she sojourns,
                 where there is comfortable room for two.
A happy recluse she is, ruminating,
                 diving deeper in to the sea of consciousness.
What does it really mean?
                  we are wound around a "KOAN", working on it,
wouldn't stop to think,  I flow
                    with the insistent gravitas of the current,
Through her the dense silence speaks,
                     in voices clear,  heard within me.
all beyond words, and in a far more
                     subtle plane, than this existence.

A single bend
A thousand times.
I hand to lend,
To darkened eyes.
Up and down, &
Back and forth.
I am a robot from henceforth.