Placid waters flow,
Lazily this summer's day,
But I hear the falls.

The yellow tulip my wife planted
35 years ago still wakes up
every Spring, beaming with life.
But wife is long gone.
Is this her way to say hello?

our love i feel is an ancient love
from a smaller world of greater ideal
a love so touched by the stars above
never to fall so as to become so real

our love i feel is an ancient love
an unspoken word of a long lost tongue
flies on the wing of an immortalised dove
to transcribe in dreams and nightly song

yet this night is upon, this night is cold
and sleep she refuses my welcome plea
this ancient love a story no longer told
white winged doves carry my angel free
now what is left, what is there of me
bereft of meaning, vanquished by decree
yet i will treasure each harbored memory
consigned to sail our love through history

I abscond from
the phone calls where her
voice reminds me of her.
She's mumbling of the brittleness
of the east Cascades;
memory can't but etch, line to line,
some sore straightliner, wheeled.

I'll still playback what you leave me,
and harbor beneath the arches of ourselves.
Penny for the poor: I never promised to pay
this sum.

The language I learned from you
was the wordless speech
that tongue teaches tongue
that eye flicks to eye
that skin lets through