Savoring the sea salt on my lips,
I remember how it tasted on your nose,
the nape of your neck and so much more,
those delectable three months
when you were my summer man.

Gateways to the heart
change through the seasons.

Youthful romanticism,
tempted by pastels
sweet scented carnations
valentines in pink envelopes
a rosebud mouth.

Passionate eroticism,
eyes seek carnal depths
lips' open invitation
rose petal paths
and pulsing tempos.

Love divine, a decoupage,
years layered on years
passion and comfort
within familiar folds,
your skin next to mine.

She lives on a merry-go-round
senses dulled by blurred vision
maniacal calliope music
rides nowhere every day
mired in circle sameness.

She chose the blue horse
its golden mane rich in gilt
matched her lust then shocked
her as its cold cylindrical pole
ignored her calls to stop.

He rides two steeds behind her
eyes wild, hair disheveled
desperately out of synch
up down to her down up
laps the field again and again.

Hot desire fuels
his mad useless pursuit
anchored by metal plates
bolted to the forever
wildly spinning floor.

She was called a pollyanna.
Positive exclamation addicted
she high-stepped and varied her pace
through life's shifting textures.

Retrieving sea glass and a scallop-cut piece of shell
from the day's foam ruffled waves
at the edge of iridescent aquamarine.

She lived as a greeter.
Always expectant, rounding each corner
to meet until-now unfound friends or catch
a coin's shiny glint from the sidewalk's crevasse.

A collector too, she gathered smiles as she
walked past and sometimes toward faces
moving to their meeting places for the day.

She said regrets lead backward.*
Ruminations rehash long ago or too current
memories looking for what-ifs and what-thens
not in her mind the stuff of collectibles.

She chose to live today
and dream tomorrow
always loving forward.

I stand mesmerized.
Dawn brings serenity’s beauty
rippled patterns glisten on black sea
gulls hover over softly churning wake.

Moving patterns of white wings
against dark greens and grey rock edges
the occasional light house turns its eye
wood frame homes nestle in their woods.

The ship slowly glides in dark waters
silent through Sweden’s archipelago
guardian isles to myriad lines of ancestry
protector, barrier from encroaching cities.

A lone welcome call from among the gulls
pierces the still air with its starkness
primitive in nature and surely also heard
by our grandfather and his and his.

She holds the watering can in hand
too late for dried wispy dandelions
swaying in the slight breeze
seed pods gnawed by nature.

Loosened tendrils float slowly
through thick humid air
memories and dreams of spring
long beyond her clutching grasp.

leaf
                         misshapen
                         shriveled once green
              donned vibrant red disguise
              to ward off lurking decay
             fallen tendon of skeletal oak
        hardened veins stand out from brittle flesh
                  dull brown age spots on blackened stem
             curled like death’s beckoning finger elasticity gone
                    your smallest pieces granular near dust
                          hearkened back unto your mother soil
                      tomorrow’s wind will hurl you
                         to another place
                           or unthinking footsteps
                            will grind you
                       into
                        no-
                                   thing-
                              ness
'