Sometimes I wonder if
the world is as big as it seems.
Are these people I avoid on the subway
in the hallway
on staircases
in elevators
really strangers?
And I think of how the glass plate
of a perfect window
looks crisp and familiar
to a doomed bird,
And how an unseemly field
turns into a battleground
And how a single glance
changes a life
And how big a marble must
seem to an ant
And how sometimes you can drown
in a drop of water
running down a stranger's check
And maybe the whole world
is just a reflection
in some stranger
in the elevator's
eye.

Free your castles to the sky.
Hold a hand
Other than yours
And speak
Like you never met me,
As I go from passing glance
To stare.

Let January be itself
And us
The month to follow
Or months
If your heart seemed willing:

For I am not your friend
Or a stranger
That wanted to be.
I'm just in love,
And in love
I breathe anew.

So search now
As if you haven't found me,
But as for me,
I've found my heart

© 2010 J.S.P.

1
         i watch the ice
melt from the roof,

in slow drips, the one
     chasing the other down,

slipping to the pool of
water, edging out onto

  the driveway, where, tonight,
i expect it will refreeze

2
        and,
i wonder,

if i have given you something
and you have given me something

         a gift neither expected
nor intended

       will the sun shine any warmer?

The moon is lost forever;
the sky has swallowed the stars.
If the heavenly bodies retain no hope,
where may we mortals find ours?

In the story of Patroclus
no one survives, not even Achilles
who was nearly a god.
Patroclus resembled him; they wore
the same armor.

Always in these friendships
one serves the other, one is less than the other:
the hierarchy
is always apparant, though the legends
cannot be trusted--
their source is the survivor,
the one who has been abandoned.

What were the Greek ships on fire
compared to this loss?

In his tent, Achilles
grieved with his whole being
and the gods saw
he was a man already dead, a victim
of the part that loved,
the part that was mortal.

Note nothing of why or how, enquire
no deeper than you need
into what set these veins on fire,
note simply that they bleed.

Spain fought before and fights again,
better no question why;
note churches burned and popes in pain
but not the men who die.