This society is plagued by the search for perfect things.
But as I sat there doodling with my finger on your spine,
I realized one of the most perfect things in the world
Is often the imperfect boy, with messy hair, asleep in your lap.
When you are afraid to move him
and to love him too much.

Your eyes where the color of summer wheat grass
They promised a hot, hazy summer
And reminded of life brought to it by the spring
Like brushing my fingertips across the wheat grass
My eyes sweeping yours
Let me feel everything that you where
Are now
And like a seed in the wind
Everything that we could be together.

My days have been numbered
By my fingers and toes.
If I had a hundred days
Would I have enough time
To memorize the features of your face?
So when I close my eyes
Your image develops on them
A dark room to remember
Where memories sit waiting in reels
Hoping that once more
light will pass through them.

Brick walls are incredible structures
The builder must realize the need for the wall,
then for many days must painstakingly
place mortar between bricks.
They must build with intention.
If not, it is no longer a wall
it will be left to decay in the rain.
However,
once finished it will stand strong against the weather,
impede prying eyes and thieves,
dissuade creatures and man alike,

The nature of the brick wall is this:
It only takes a single person
willing enough to remove that brick,
to break the mortar and push the brick through.
Their motivation
does not matter
so long as they find the reason for it being built.

I have never encountered nature
In something so human
I have never encountered bark that
Sees with the glassy clarity of an eye
I have never wanted to touch the fog
So badly with my lips that I thirst.

I huddle on this packed earth
Making the decision of life or wonder
I skim freshly fallen needles near me
too afraid to grasp them
I drink water that is not fog and long
To jump into the mist that hovers.

I hold back as if there were a poison
Dripping as sap from each tree
The needles so fine and sharp
Gleam menacingly in filtered light
The mist without air poised temptingly
Ready to choke me at the first breath.

Helpless I rest with the decay
Hoping the sun will raise a new day
Burn off the mist that so enthralls me
Dry up the sap that bleeds from the trees
Sweep away the glinting needles
With a breath of air
Replacing the moon that so knowingly
Winks from above the trees.

"It’s a mysterious thing time is"
said the pocket watch man
whose shop resided on the corner of 4th and Mabel Street.
"Do you see how the greatest minds
use clocks as the object of mystery?"
I was young then, I shook my head,
hair bobbing with the force of my agreement.
"But why? Why are clocks so mysterious?
For after all, it is we who give them time-"
He trailed off lost in thought again.
I picked up a silver watch that needed repair,
dusting it off on my light blue petticoat.
I looked at it, the gleaming glass showing no movement
He looked up, "That one is broken, I think there is a gear loose"
"I know" I break my stare from the watch
and look to the window,
The old man cups my hands around a small object
Shocked at the cold metal in my palms,
then by the warmth of his hands,
I look down and sitting there was his own brass watch;
beaten from the war, chain swinging below
"They believe when a watch runs out of time,
the person who gave it to you dies"
My eyes widened as I looked into his face
"Is it true" I say, I sure hoped it wasn't
"Of course not" he assured me patting my head
"Of course not". He shooed me out of his shop
and warned me not to lose that watch.

He built the clock that’s in town
and every day the clock strikes noon
It chimed just once then stopped too soon
He died at noon that very day
And his watch has never worked the same way.

Her hair was the color of the filtered rays
of sunlight that streamed
through the trees that summer.
"Look, look under that rock"
I looked around my ankles
"Where?" Rings jumped up
at my heavy steps.
"There" her arm thin,
like the branch above my head
shot up holding another crawdad.
"How do you do that?"
"I don't know"
Her lithe steps left foot prints in the mud
and I pressed them out with my feet.
Erasing any traces we where ever together,
there on that bank
on that hot august day.