Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

  -- David Whyte
      from Everything is Waiting for You
     ©2003 Many Rivers Press

Nightfall
and I cannot get over
the architecture of you

I could draw your fingerprints
from memory
with rainbow crayons

paint
how you scrunched your toes
like yesterday’s paper

whenever the water
threatened to soak
our undressed feet

We are here
talking about
anything everything

nothing at all
your words are my wine
I want to sip every drop

ask for another bottle
in the coal-black silence
and get smashed

wake up tomorrow with sand
strewn through my fringe
a silly smile or two

forget what is not
on this beach
and know only now

the tone of the waves
hue of your lipstick
beat of our hearts

I like when it begins   the white
icing of a dream   and the ones I only know
with my eyes closed    glow like rubies
brighter than    raspberries in July.

I like when it   unravels as a scarf
the people   clearer than cellophane  
the speech fresh as juice   here it pours  
into each eye   I like to swallow each second.

I like to wallow in    the shadows of strangers
until light   slinks under the door come morning
and I like the very spangled thought of    you
too close not close    enough to my arms.

I like the buzz of my blood   flowing quicker
when you talk   knowing your bones
disorderly network of navy veins   I like
to feel the static crackle and fizz   between us.

I like the bench   in your back garden
and us on it   I like the heady loveliness of it all  
inhale the flavours   brush your cheek
cling to the seconds ’til I wake   and you go.

Head up, stay strong, fake a smile, move on,
they always said,
No one will see a broken spirit.

They were wrong.

Your eyes saw past it all.

The way your eyes loved my soul
wasn't in vain or vanity.
They didn't see the complex masks
or the pounds of makeup --
Your eyes saw me in all my simplicity.
You dove into the darkness of my eyes
and found this small broken light --
some strange thing you called a *soul.
Your eyes loved that shattered light --
they held it with kind words and soothing embraces.

I felt like The Golden Girl turned inside out:
a face comprised of dullness and imperfection,
a soul of great beauty and grace.
With words, smiles, and touch,
you convinced me to stay in my skin,
but for once in my insipid life,
my soul felt alive and bright.
No longer would I battle the darkness,
no longer would I be afraid of the monsters inside.
Your eyes struck the match that ignited my soul again.

Quiet echoes bring the night of cricket song and firefly
Masks of clouded abstract shades intercept
Foaming colors take the eye to moments of shadowed dreams
Crimson plumes beneath a starlit canopy
Cars, like low flying jets, unaware, stay within the highway lines
Footing soft on dry grass down paths not yet carved

A sphere, above mature pecan trees, appears as curtains lift
igniting the eastern sky in beaconed majesty
Slowly puzzle pieced mist clears and bursts of color,
rainbows of dark bands announce the arrival
as this evening’s lunar show begins amidst
heavy sighs and mesmerized smiles

Full in splendor, basking in myth,
the blue moon, distant yet touching the soul
for this night is shared, beyond horizon’d glare
and focused thoughts of two places, two hearts, one sky
Whispers follow beams of ancient descent, quietly finding her
hoping she will hear and know…for it is this moon that connects us

~

I have stood on aging avenues
watching walls crumble
while destiny’s debris
collects
at my feet

pieces of the past?

I have heard the laughter of babies
and the wail of the homeless,
opposites in a
straight line of
what is
and what might be

voices of the future?

I have stared into the portals of
left over meanings,
methodically
laid out to rest
on long tables
of bad intents

visions cast of shadows?

I have knelt before a dream,
clutching my chest
with indecision,
the pain
a reminder of my
fragile heart-
opened

memories of lost love?

I have cried
without a witness,
empty streams of
dense forgiveness,
requested of no one
and answered by the same

and nothing remains?