I found her in the vapor of a summer dream
She was standing in the door to Paradise
When I asked if I could see her in the sunlight
Her laughter matched the sparkle in her eyes.

Her smile was like a sunlit pond at twilight.
Her eyes resembled sapphires at high noon.
Her hair was like a swirling touch of midnight.
Her voice as sweet as birdsong heard in June.

Her appearance gave me cause to stop and wonder
If who I saw was really standing there
Or was it just my wild imagination
Creating loveliness from smokey Summer air.

I crept a careful step or two towards her
My pulse was pounding madly in my throat
She frowned at me then edged a little backwards-
And suddenly between us was a moat.

There was no bridge or any walkway over.
She was securely on the other side.
It seemed as though she couldn't let me join her
She made that clear no matter what I tried.

I wrote a note of love on parchment paper
And sailed it to her in a little boat
She reached down to fetch it from the water
And read while lumps were forming in my throat

She tucked the folded note into her *****
And wiped a forming teardrop from her eye
She smiled and then she sadly whispered to me
The only word I feared - it was Goodbye.

The moat became a little stream of water
The doorway, two tall Jacaranda trees
The paradise that somehow she had come from
Transformed to smoke, soon taken by the breeze.

And I was left alone to stand and wonder
If everything I’d seen was truly there
Or was this just a middle-aged delusion
Providing me a thrilling tale to share.
ljm

I could see myself as I truly am.
what would I see???

I love all good poems,
and how they make me
feel whole but deboned,
de~parted,
sometimes cleansed
sometimes *****,
sometimes ashamed,
occasionally fried,
occasionally enlived,
often all of these,
simultaneously

I love how mine please you,
breaking the knots of anonymity,
unleashing the little white package
strings of connection, and, when yours,
make me guffaw, or even  a better, person-age,
when we weep deep in our  recesses where the
just-beneath-the-surface emotes, are pricked and
brought to the surface, for the first time, or the last of time,
exposed, curated, healed, leaving but a tiny sore, that lingers
on the body's surfaces,where all things.are etched that
are needy for a reminding of the when,
and here, right there, is the where,

but your loving of likes somehow
dissatisfying, like a kiss, perfunctory, skullduggery
or dis genuine, a hit and a move on,which is why,
I treasure your comments, long or short,
insightful or delightful, critical or critique(e),
just a tender heart of appreciation, a snuggle
from the sea, throned out of Jonah's whale...
rounded bellicose belly

but they render me
alive,
when they split and spit me, to you,
you, to each, defined in pieces, gratitude
nuggets, each, treasured, each hugged, each letter,
a custom bespoke of  connectivity and

who needs friends, when your words
embrace me so deep repeat and touch me
in places where my heart must follow on & on.
now many poems you commission with every exposition.
even the dimplest thanks is a vibrato of pleasuring sounds, that
you, you, you, took that particular moment of time to
express the heartfelt, destroys the invidious
that does quiet creepily slides inside us,  
saying I am your comforter false,
but is not!

use your words, that,
they to the children teach; let us too
embrace this honorific so terrific, and touch each other with
comments, a sharing, and the sol shines on
'*we two too, for all to seer and see

I dreamt this dream before I could speak it out loud,
Between the signifier and imperfect signified,
With all kinds of broken hours and promises never kept,
I tried transforming what was often said in the past.

This place would seem so real,
Made for me, trembling in the middle,
With small and growing earthquakes.
I wrote myself again—my little truths.

Looking for missing lines without wings,
Carrying stones inside my mind,
In tight, frayed bags from my beating heart,
without hope for a final insight.

Perhaps I just passed through the steam
Of a swirling, repetitive, chaotic dance,
Seeking tickets, carving an elusive imprint
With my mosaic in this human code.

Five minutes quietly slipped by.
My earned time vanished.
I had my moments going along the roadsides,
Avoiding the end of this poetic journey.

I stay wrapped in a heavy coat of suspicion.
I saw Moirés crafting another delusion.
I found a small reward in an addictive cliché,
To feel short relief from what I call my reality.

I remember what I did before,
Choosing every day not to cast a stone
Into the center of what I can’t grasp
With my breathing, human existence.
And this breath was enough.