Channel all your pain
to the summoned fields of my sun-baked heart

let me be your long-suffering, xeriscaping soil
--once rain-fed by this love--

now as parched as
Atacama

the plateau where we bowed our heads
and pleaded for mere drops of forgiveness

She stands waist-deep in the tide.

Who knows what salt from her eyes,
has mingled with that of the sea.

She had called to him,
countless times before
in mournful wails -
as she does this night.

And she hears him -
faint whispers as if couriered by the crests
that sit on top of waves.

But it isn’t enough...
She longs to hear more.
Oh how she yearns with her rapid beats
to hear his calls as surely as she did
a lifetime before.

Water and love -
she knows she’s in too deep.

So she fights a fuelled fight -
one step at a time
with sand beneath her feet,
his voice in her ear
and the fire in her heart.

She’s getting closer to him
and she knows...

She smiles, submits
and finally disappears
into the welcoming ***** of the ocean.

our mouths go dry,
our actions get lazy,
our anchors unmoored,
our directions change,
our bearings are misaligned,
our charts remain unplotted,
our complacencies swell,
our greed metastasise,
our ignorance nurtured...


How then,
would our story end?

.

I search for the daffodils and only find the brambles       
I listen for the music and only hear the traffic
I reach for little prizes and get my fingers slapped
I memorize the words but they won’t let me sing them

I batter at these stone-clad walls but I cannot break through them
The ladder that I built fell short when I ran out of lumber
I found the only way around them ended in forever
So with this teaspoon I must dig until I have a tunnel.
ljm