To comfort me the rain hums a tune
as if she could sense I was feeling down
I get buoyant by the soothing tone,
pick up the strands that once were broken

Drenched woods after the rain has gone,
with the wind,repeat it, but sounds like a moan,
it takes  much subtlety, to empathize, I learn
to evoke sublime feelings that touch and lift the soul.

In the narrowest of lanes
I found the sweet shop.

Behind dusty crumbling glasses
dozed the old keeper
smelling of sugar, milk and sweat
over fossils of Paleolithic sweets
on a time machine from the century
he never was
to a millennium he doesn't bother about
clinging onto clay by pottery
not succumbing to synthetic
counting not on android
but accounting on parchment
with the art of finger's arithmetic
most intricately scribbled with pencil
announcing progress is a trouble
not designed for the simple
and contentment has no more nitty-gritty
than price and quantity.

Over his head
spiders worked and reworked
from the ceiling to the glass
as have been doing
since Carboniferous.

Somewhere, amongst the debris
of cigarettes after ***,
chemicals to induce sleep,
I forgot what it means to love.

I forgot what it means to breathe,
to sit still, and just be.

Somewhere, beneath these hooded seams
of solitude and well-versed grief,
beats a heart less cynical,
less tamed by vague distraction.

My nervous ticks and bad habits,
line of best fit for a near-hit
of satisfaction:

This is not enough, I know.
This is not nearly enough
to cool the bray of life
that still rattles meaning in my bones.

I forgot what it means to love,
what separates a house from a home.

Somewhere beyond this thirst
for brand-new words
is a gratitude for all that has been.
Every cliché holds a truth.

Every sentiment, a cocoon,
that I should lie so still inside

until I am wholesome,
until I am new.

The man at the studio doesn't like us

we aren't pretty as the teens
not dazzling like the newly weds
our faces are pretty grim
smiles are once a river
foreheads dry riverbeds
eyes hold no commotion
but he does it for money
and winds up quick.

We walk to the river
where under the grey February sky
she plays with our reflections
babbling and breaking us
into unreadable pieces.

I find some amazing things when I am
not looking for them, they seem to find me:
forty bucks in the parking lot of Dollar General,
when I walked  there with a pocketful of change
to buy a cheap cigar, so nicotine
deprived,
a dog left in the country by somebody,
the best behaved most loyal black labrador,
when I was lonely as ******* hell,
and she is now my shadow,
kittens in the laundry room and a
mama looking up at me like , I am sorry,
when I had lost my best friend the week before,
her a cat lover and animal hoarder,
and I calmed the mother cat and said I know
you are in heaven Marge, Thank you for
letting me see!

Tis good to be moved by a song
To shed a single tear or two alone
To walk into beautiful paintings
in the shoes of it's creator
To cool ones feet in the clapping stream
for a quiet sensation
To experience tall evergreens in joyous
ovation , count the Angels within the
clouds on a morning observation
To plan a loving reply for a neighbor
Tend to a passion with sweet undying labor* ...