My starless nights have transcended into your shadowless morn

My lost fireflies have transcended into your guiding stars upon the sky

My tears of dews and rain have transcended into your ocean of fulfillment and happiness

My scattered breadcrumbs of thoughts have transcended into your tome of love and life

My moments of a passing glance have transcended into your eternity of within my sight

My fear of everything have transcended into your love of all beings, earthly and otherwise

And I

My lonesome I have transcended into your ever-presence

As you hold me through every particle of my soul

I felt alive

Sharp twinges burst through my body like fireworks in the dead of the night

And finally

The blink of me transcended through time

She writes to him in the hospice,
his widow-in-waiting.  A girl at her care home
brings her envelopes, colourful pens, sheets of paper in
pastel shades, and takes her missives to
Reception to go out with the mail.
She writes to him, keeping her messages short so
the nurses have time to read them to him, and because
he gets tired so quickly now.
She encloses copy photographs for the nurses to
show to him, pictures of their adventures together:
them in hiking boots and toting backpacks atop a
Saxon burial mound; picnicking and almost sunburnt
beside a vast lake reflecting a perfect, bygone blue sky
in its tranquil surface; on a sandy Welsh beach, building a
campfire from smooth, soft-grained, bone-pale driftwood; him
asleep on a train, his head resting on luggage
and hat pulled down over eyes.
In one communiqué she writes:
“I’m sorry you took the mountains with you.”
She means – she explains to the care home girl
who brings her stationery and takes her mail – that
when he moved to the hospice and she to the care home,
all the photos of their mountain holidays – the Vogelsberg,
the Dolomites, Monte Rosa, Chamonix – had been
packed up along with his possessions, and put in storage
by his family.  She sends him copies of
the only photos she has left.
And that is what she means, but not just that.
It’s been a long time since she stomped mud off of
hiking boots, or felt that gorgeous ache in her muscles
from a long, hard climb, or kissed in a cable-car,
or let the wind tan her face as she breathed
rarefied air.  Those summits seem very far away,
and the woman who once scaled them never could have dreamed
that life could become so flattened.

In some quiet room, a nurse shows him the photographs.  
A heart monitor describes
a craggy range of peaks and dips; each elevation, every ascent,
could be a terminal journey.  Soon, one surely will.
The nurse can’t tell if he hears her as she reads to him,
“I’m sorry you took the mountains with you.”

.
There’s an ancient duct tape patched
roller suitcase still up in the attic,
scarred by sky miles and undiscerning
indifference;  it came to rest like a final breath
exhaled at the end of the long road ―

In the dusty rafters of silent repose  
the death of an alter-ego comes to life
and jars and jogs the  sleeping dogs 
that lay benign as a pothole riddled road

Holding onto memories buried alive,
hidden away remembered ― 
      sans wings to fly away
laid bare unweighed with the weight
of everything else garnered and saved
      subsisting in a shallow grave;
hoarded and hidden away breathing
locked up with the other baggage borne
       behind tired eyes

Feeling the ache of blood stained knees
falling down sullied at the side of the road
Hindsight and a roll of duct taped memories
linger;   stuck to the  grey bandage scars,
second guessing should have thrown out
with the permanently temporary
fading plasticized luggage name-tags
back when I was still close enough to care;
too many miles to reconsider  ago

Some say: "it's the journey not the destination"                                    .
Some day when its too late we'll know
Some day it will be too late to make amends
        for everything i could not be ...


           harlon rivers ... 07  06  2018

I saw the sun steep
into the seascape ―
lonely as a drowning
    wave
         on still-waters

the dimming of the day
rescinding evanescent daylight                                                         ­         .
fading with the slack tide
         lost at sea ―
a gloaming moment
         let fall from
the remains of the day,
like some other passing
sea bird's molted feather
drifts away untamed

I sit silent as the driftwood
lingering at the watermark,
watching a random gust
    erase the footprints
of another recurring day, 
bearing abandoned memories
    and vacant heartbeats,
atrophied in the drifting sands

    and I see you walking
    towards the abating  
    midnight sunset ―
         but I know
    you're just a mirage;    
like the dimming afterglow
of so many waning moons
            elapsed
         
ever-changing tides grow low  
and promises made lightly  
         do ebb away
          
Scanning the distant horizon ―    
    a blindfold heart    
    mooning all at sea;
parsing a deserted shoreline,
    wondering if love
          is too late ,..
    to stem the tide ―


        harlon rivers

      30   May   2018

the sleek
cool marble
chills run
down
the stone
delineations
and curvatures
of fine hands
and legs
white and pure

her eyes
blue
a fountain of youth
i wish i could bathe in it
forever

her blank gaze
from vacant
rolling ball
sockets
falls dreamlessly
into the oblivion

tinkles of music
hum and drone
noiselessly
like spoons
clattering to
the unforgiving ground

her cold heart
exposed
as she reclines,
back arched
ever so slightly

she is without
her soul and mind
the marble
her master
keeps her confined-
her own timeless paradigm

She sits in her room
Beside her lonely loom
And dreams of times of grace
And suitors come to her place.
But no one has come here,
So she sings the songs
Of being alone too long.

None will come so near
That she needs to flirt.
Instead she gathers her hurt
And weaves it into tapestries
Of such stunning majesty
That only she will applaud,
Because there is no god
That will transform her to be
A lady of famous beauty.

She never has known why
She was born forbiddingly shy.
She fears to speak and convince,
Always she is prone to wince
Instead of smiling and inviting.
Her lovely pale face whitening
With dread she cannot speak
And that makes her feel weak.

The sun rises and it sets
She has nothing to regret
Or to remember gladly
But sadly she has grown
Comfortable being alone
Since  the pain is remembered
And she never delivered
From the roaring noise
Of life without love’s joys.