Quiet Astonishment,
A breath held—
not for fear,
but for the miracle
of feeling a leaf unfold
beneath the ribs.
No pain.
Only the hush
of something ancient
remembering how to grow.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ

Stacked green crates by the futon,
records quiet as buried letters,
each sleeve longing
to be drawn out into daylight
by her small, thoughtful hands.

I just want to play that Nick Cave again
teenager’s resolve in her voice,
she drops the needle on "Tupelo",
traces Peter Murphy with her thumb,
holds Kate Bush to the light
like stained glass.

She laughs
at the ****** box on the speaker.
I tell her it’s never going to happen.
She grins, unbothered,
says she only came for the vinyl.

I watch her tilt each sleeve,
never touching the grooves,
brush the dust,
lay the needle like a secret,
slide the disc back without a wrinkle.
Each time I’m surprised
by her precision.
It’s the third time
she’s dropped by.

She makes mixtapes.
Pressing pause, pressing record,
stitching songs into a spine of hiss.
Once, to me, or to herself,
she said her father wanted a tape.
She’d mail it when
he had somewhere to send it.

She follows me across the bridge,
talking about her brother,
an ex-best friend,
mimicking her professor,
how he wags his tongue
when he writes on the chalkboard.

I haul a duffel:
apron, uniform, boots heavy with grease.
She skips in the rain,
strumming cables, humming
the last song played, still floating.

I unlock the door,
steeped in garlic and kitchen sweat,
boots leaving grime on the boards.
She isn’t there-
only the crates, stacked neater,
jackets squared, spines aligned,
as if her care was meant for me.
The room settles with her absence,
yet holds me upright
in its small, thoughtful hands.

On the last Friday of each month, the poets gather  
not in one room, but in the hush between screens,
the glow of shared breath and blinking cursors.

They come with verses tucked in sleeves,
with metaphors still warm from the pan,
with hearts half-rhymed and stanzas that ache to be heard.

This month, the theme is Equinox!
balance, breath, the tilt of light.
Some write of harvest moons,
others of lovers crossing hemispheres,
some of grief that splits the day clean as shadow.

One speaks of sugar levels and sunrise.
Another, of church bells and glucose meters.
Someone reads a mirrored poem that turns
at the solstice line and walks back through itself.

There is laughter -
the kind that lifts like foam.
There is silence -
the kind that listens.

And when the last poem lands,
when the final line finds its echo,
they linger,
not to critique,
but to hold the weight of each word
like a mug of something warm.

The meeting ends,
but the poems keep orbiting,
little equinoxes of thought,
balancing dark
and light
in the inbox of the soul.

relax.
not-within me to compose 14 poems
about anyone, but do not test me,
for if there was such a person,
it  would  be  
                            Timothy

now, not my place to over praise,
for this man hews his own road
among the thickets that separate
humans from each other, and let us
not forget, those thickest thickets
tween a man
                             and his God

he writes in a style imitative, of
some noteworthy bards, with
whom you might have some
passing Renaissance and Elizabethan
familiarity, the thought of which
attempting to do, frightens me to
                              my very soul, scored

but what ails me that this-dialogue,
tween an Englishman and a New Yorkah,
who have each a love of the commonality
of tongue, but with a perfume of idiom and
dictionary differentials, that just sweetens
each, my apple pie, and his, pie of,
                                mince

commenced in 2014, when he wrote to me with
insistence that I not throw in the proverbial
white towel of surrender, for my poetry seemed
to die on the vine, received with lemons and limes,
pleading with firm resistance to not give into
to this
                                impulse

so here we rest, with many details personal
exchanged, transversed over a great pond
dividing  and I permit myself to reveal
but this, he is a much, far better human than
I could even dream of becoming
                                being



so here we are, 11~12 years on,
and he likes my poems too oft,
calling them better than the daily,

I do not receive the daily, but daily
thank our common God for his existence,
and we share in unison a single word
                      
                                      amen.

Quick break-up Senryus.
Pick one to quickly, cut that
relationship cord:

I'm sorry, What'd you say?
I can't hear you (confused look)
- we’re breaking up.

You’re the guy that
every girl at our school wants
- it's their lucky day.

It's time that we took
our relationship to the
previous level.

I still cherish the
initial misconceptions
I had about you.
.
.
Songs for this:
Love on the Rocks by Lizzie Mintz
Lovefool by The Cardigans
Nothing Can Stop Us by Saint Etienne
Forever by X-Cetra