The call of the scrub jay
Plaintive in the silence of solitude.
The mountain before me that I must shift
Looms large as I take in my surroundings.
Song flows from my dry cracked lips
As I plead with the heavens for guidance.
My exertions drawing the moisture from my skin
And the strength from my limbs,
The walls of my last sanctuary start to crumble
As the dehydration sets in.
The last ray of sunlight fades,
And darkness sets in,
Mirroring my growing dread.
I lie in my nest
Throwing up final pleas
To the spirits of the world
To protect my nearly naked body.
The caress of cedar bows
Normally so comforting,
Now warding of the welcome respite of sleep.
Cold spreading over my body
As it slips through the earth,
Encompassing my body in its fatal grip.
My mind no longer reliable tells me
The end is near.
As my legs carry me back,
Back to the beginning,
Back on my commitment,
Back towards who I was,
The moisture I need so badly
Flows down my cheeks
As I accept defeat.
As I dismiss my bid for independence.

Eyes turned down,
Anger and disappointment flowing through my veins,
Anguish apparent on my tear stained face.
He looks at me with this look of love.
The same that had pushed me to this challenge.
The same that had always given me such confidence.
The same that I now felt like I didn't deserve.
As understanding flowed from his heart to mine,
My strength returned,
My confidence restored,
My will whole again.
Clarity and determination
Regained their hold over my mind,
Kicking the panic and excuses
From their tyrannical thrones.
The cold dark night ahead
Now no more worrying than a walk in a meadow
As i set off back to my temporary home.

Love is not lust tho' lust may lead to love
As seedlings basked in sunlight spring to flowers,
Young blooms may make a golden treasured trove
Where tender tulips kiss in huddled bowers

Love ripens like straw-nested berry fields,
Plump, juicy, flavoursome, and blushing red
As nature's bounteous sweet harvest reveals
Her shapely form resplendent in her bed

Love is an acorn to the mighty oak,
Deep-rooted and unbounded by the sky;
Love ripples like a genteel puddled cloak
Laid bare to keep a silken petal dry

    Love is but love and life is but to love:
    So poets write and lovers seek to prove

We sit up late and talk **** and glass box confessionals
Of fallen men and angels and the space between our hands
And though we spit different brands of fire,
we still connect in between the flames,
In between our overgrown youth and the cracks in the fault lines of our teeth
Between our separate worlds we meet open and honest in your attic and seek to touch the places we previously could not  reach alone
And I am breathless in return
And you, fire eyed girl, speak in sonnets to the dark
You take the circles around your eyes and string them into free verse
Spilling free from the patterns in your blood
You fight within to take hold of the love that is all around you
Because it lives all around you
Love follows you like a dog nipping at your heels
Chasing you into the depths of your being where it fights you up in arms at the immensity and grandeur of it all
Love fights for you
And you'll let it win
And so we sit and talk up the last four years of hell like it was nothing
Though we both know it meant everything just the same
And on the drive home I'm overwhelmed by the lights
Overcome at the light within you
Tangled beautiful girl
I was called fire eyed too but yours is a different sort of flame
A different brand of light
And it burns bright in my memory on the way home.

the voices, they become
white noise. white smoke,
           my wide eyes are
wandering again
in search of you

behind foggy windows and
along the lines where walls meet
ceilings. your shoulders,
they are too silent today--
I lose your blue-rimmed

certainty in the current.
do you hear me calling?
you begin to turn--
          dark hair, sharp edges
but the voices become

miles

           and we are lost.