The  tulips  lift
there
smiling  faces
To  the  afternoon  sun.

­Keith  Wilson  Windermere  UK  2017.

you are not afraid of being,
of feeling, of living
what you are.
and you don't live life; she lives you.
you are color, you are joy.
you don't hide,
you are in the midst of everything,
between yellow flowers, red roses
and pink sunsets.
you are in the waves of the sea,
dancing and swimming
in waters of grace.
you are in the stars,
you are in the sun,
you are in the light.

i wanted to write a poem
about your curls
and how they made my heart
beat like a drum played by a five-year old
who had chocolate cake for lunch
how my fingers were fighting each other
and fighting the urge
to tangle with yours and
make their way to that
chocolate colored head of yours
and get tangled in it too
and i wanted to write a poem
of how much i wanted to be like Cinderella
and leave something behind
with the hopes that you’d call me back
something like a notebook or my
polka-dotted waterbottle
but i guess the only thing i left
was a tiny little part of my heart
on the backseat of your car

over the years
life leaves its traces
on our bodies, our souls,
in our memories

    the moment when a broken twig
    just barely missed the eye
    of a cavorting child

the first time promises
turned into cheats, betrayal, strife
adding injustice to the loss of trust

    the day when suddenly
    you could not read
    the writing on the blackboard any more
    and needed glasses

the time when playing the piano
got so painful that you had to stop dreaming of a pianist’s career

    love’s first elations
    followed by despair and disappointment

some lucky instances as well
have kept you kicking & alive until this day

    crashing through the old glass door
    mostly unharmed
    with your first scooter

during a summer job at the steel mill
seeing just your leather working glove
    and not your hand
disappear into the hydraulic power press

   getting away with just a crick in your neck
   when your idiot friend caused a car crash
   that left only small pieces of your glasses
   in the wreck

out of them all
the scars of loss
    or threat of loss
are such that never die

    your little son saved
    by last-minute surgery

sitting at your daughter’s bed
for several days
until high fever finally abated

   your mother’s unexpected death
   on the first day of spring

the slow and dreary suffering
your father bore with desperate pride
a few more years

all these engravings
   and many more
written by the flow of time and space
are waiting just around the corner
    from your daily living room
mixed in with fonder memories
of joyous time and wonderful events

together they have shaped
the person that you are
your life, your world

which you still try
to understand

when we look sideways
at a subject/object of desire

do we see what is there
     or what we want to see

glances may blur the image
    distort the view
    reflect realities of our dreams

yet often they determine our actions

and thus

the rest of our lives