For those days when there aren’t words to be said, because all I feel is “I miss you.”
We haven’t looked for definitions and I won’t start.
And for the times when in a veil of smoke I melt into a ring and live a hundred years in the cycle of consciousness through my twisted form.
Then you touch me and I’m free.
For those nights when the stars are closer to my thoughts then your mind could ever be,
But I don’t know how say that I love you anyway.

Oh laughing maid of carefree days held in sunlight’s last embrace,
You’ve shed your hues of emerald green,
Dawned earthy tones and hide your face.
Behind a veil of falling leaves,
I no longer see sweet summer’s blush,
Gone is she that twined the flowers,
And brought forth the warbling hymn of the thrush.
The winnowing winds replace your song,
Scattering mortal leaves away,
As billowing clouds condense above,
You cannot keep the cold at bay.
Beneath your new bower of crisp pine,
You sit enthroned in gold and red,
Gone is the laughing child of the sun
A regal woman sits in her stead.
Yet do not mourn for what you were,
Stately autumn holds a new delight,
You hang ripe fruit upon the tree,
And paint the ground with ice at night.
And if perhaps you still while away,
Dreaming of the mirthful joy lost,
Know that the sweet girl of the light,
Will be borne again from winter’s frost.

I am from worn out measuring cups where the numbers no longer show,
From years of guessed quantities and over sugared cakes.
I am from cracked blue paint,
And the mantra “we’ll get a new coat next year.”
I am from the cow peas, crop circling, and honeysuckle vines ornamented with butterflies.
I am from Grandpa’s tobacco yellowed hands, Grandma Doll’s old wives tales,
From “eat your bread crusts and your hair will curl,”
And from “your face just might stick like that.”
I am from morning walks and the sylvan veil of moss,
From meandering trails and the drip of rain on leaves.
I am from Otter Pops, and bright blue tongues.
I am from cassette tapes, now left in the back of the closet to grow antique.
And VCRs,
From Monsters Inc. and Totoro.
And I am from the worn bindings of The Phantom Tollbooth and The Velveteen Rabbit.
I am from the meadow,
From searching for fairies, and sometimes even finding them.
And from the whispered promise “I’ll dream of you and you’ll dream of me…”
I am from the babbling gurgling creek, from the itch of nettles and the deep earthy scent of loam.
I am from the cat in Alice in Wonderland,
From Jacob and Leah’s wronged daughter.
I am from the Xanadu, the Akela, and the Dynamite,
From the crack of sails and the swing of the boom.
I am from placid seas and the rushing tumult of rain,
From heavy grey skies and flaming sunsets painted in watercolor across the Olympics.
I am from the pink syringe and the old blind dog’s last breath,
And I am from the hole where we laid her.
I am from the evergreen planted in the frozen ground to the sounds of my first cry,
That tree whose limbs witnessed my first breath, whose lofty trunk now stands as a testament, a marker, of where I am from.

The sky has broken this morning.
Swelled, stirred, and burst its bounds, cascading from the stars to my door step.
I know it will vanish, evaporate with the cruel bright sun,
But for now it seems far from fleeting.
Let me show you.

Mist still hangs heavy from the night.
Only now it’s been stained, dyed by some careless celestial hand.
A deep, probing blue, which, suspended by mist, veils the hills and accents the trees green.
It invites you to run, vanish like the horizon into the cobalt dark.
Let me show you.

So tangible is the indigo tapestry,
That you want to gather it in your arms, infuse it into your skin, and return no different than the sky.
You want to steel it, hide it for yourself, throw your life away to become a blue *****.
Its looks so palpable you can’t bear to disturb it, to face its actual evanescence.
Let me show you.

But already the sun has permeated its edges,
Staining the flawless dark with canals of weak, tepid, periwinkle.
With day fast approaching the mist begins to disperse,
But with a final hurrah of undiluted grandeur it thins leaving the hills tinted with the sky.
Let me show you.

The sun by now has done too much damage for the blue to be recognizable,
Though a watered down version still clings to the western tree tops,
The clearest blue now lives in my head, a memory of a broken sky,
Lost to those who don’t know where to look, forever gone, unless…
Let me show you.

You think I should try to change the world.
To start climbing this insurmountable
Problem.
To scale it until I either fall off
Or have to stop and just cling on
Because it only gets steeper the higher you go,
And is their even a top?

Is that how it should be?

And haven’t we had our chance?
Perhaps it would be better to just move aside,
Lay down whatever we’ve taken with us,
Misunderstandings
Machines
Words
Ideas
Hate
Love?
What would we still have?
So maybe I don’t want to change the world.

Or if I must
I want to change just one small thing.
Only it would be so slight
No one but me would noticed
And I’d never tell.

Would it matter?
One blue pixel
On a blank red screen
Or a bottle
Lost among the waves.
If hope falls in a forest alone
Does it make a sound?
And if it does,
How far can that sound travel?

You think I should try to change the world.
You’re probably right.
But at this instant I can only pray,
That this country’s wiring
And this world’s spark
Is intact enough
That when I flip just one small switch,
Somewhere a light turns on.

You left me tracing pictures in the water,
With my fingers, and my tongue, and my hair.
And while you left I thought I walk on water.
you returned, I was no longer there.

And you thought that you could dive down to catch me,
You thought you saw my face far in the deep,
But darling, you didn’t need to catch me,
not everything can forever keep.

And I’m so sorry that I lead you to the water,
Because I know you never learned to float,
While your lungs burned, searching neath the water,
I was cradled, rocked to sleep, in a row boat.

I thought at first that you had come to save me,
Because you never stooped searching neath the surf
But I wonder if you really came to own me,
Because you needed to poses something of worth.

You should know that either way “I miss you”
Because my whim has left you lost somewhere at sea
And maybe someday I will find you,
Washed ashore with all the other beach debris.

But for now I’m tracing pictures in the water,
My hands following ripples in my wake,
Because I know somewhere off beneath the water,
You can feel my fingers dancing on the lake.

If the stars didn’t move would they matter to me?
My eye is drawn to action, to journeys, and stories,
To the leap, and bound, and slipping back down and then rising up through.
I scan the night sky to view the moment when darkness is filled with light,
When the swing of Ursa Minor fills the emptiness of stars too far away to see.
Even If, from my rooftop, the movement seems infinitesimal when measured in the span of each breath and heartbeat,
I know somewhere each point hurtles by in a stream of fire a million times faster than my thoughts or eyes
And I just cannot get close enough to see it
But each time I blink new darkness turns to light and each passing breeze that stirs my mind away misses the transformation back.
How can I ever make up each instant I let pass?
My eyes can only stay open for so long.
I’ll slow the time down with smoke and the mirrored reflection of the sky in your eyes,
But then the loss of each second is only more acute.
And my being is razed in each second I cannot raise my eyes.

Yet from this rubble new words can grow,
New thoughts spring to mind,
My feet can continue wandering,
And my eyes continue searching,
Till I begin to wonder is it the movement that captures me or the holes between each ***** of light.
In the space there is the conviction of the dark and the empty room to question.
So wrapped in a blanket and my own curiosity I sit till dawn
Screaming wordless prayers to the cosmic dynamo,
Imprinting nights behind my eyelids,
And mapping constellations in my finger tips,
The muscle memory of arms extending to embrace the outlines of the stars,
Even as they dance away.
So I stare into that void, forever hoping and fearing that whatever stares back will remain silent and allow me to continue searching for one… second… more