grace
I've finally
found
once gray and dusty
like an
antique
wedding dress pulled
from the attic and
dyed
a summer time hue
if you take me
dancing
I promise
if you can be
patient
I'll show this
newfound
trait to
you

Its more like crashing than any other feeling I've known; to be somewhere you've been before and knowing all too well the familiar sound of screeching tires headed for this cinder block these unstoppable things will come my way again. I know that helplessness tastes of bile and blood close but not yet on its way up. In my car I listen to jazz as much as the blues and most days I don't mind that I can't always tell the difference. Just so long as the music keeps my mind from replaying the sounds of glass and steel and cinders crashing down.

Do you remember the sound of crickets after a summer storm?

After the air has cleared and the swamp is --for an instant-- unclouded; long after you've forgotten that moments before it was all so close to crashing down on you.


Do you remember crickets and toads like two sides of a symphony you wanted to call silence?

Cool cut grass stuck to your heels and dirt-caked knees that bent to bring you closer to a nameless piece of earth.


Do your hands recall the feel of earthworms and snails and soft wet dirt?

You must have held it all in awe and called it simplicity but you know now even the smallest piece of nature you'll never be wise enough to understand.


Do you remember the feel of summer sun on your face as vividly as I now know the glow of winter moon on mine?

Clouds carried overhead don't always promise snow and the sun doesn't always bring warmth when you want it.


Do you know now how little you understood of elaborate things you dared call simple?

Crickets didn't cry for you and toads had their own purpose for cooing in the night and neither much cared about any sort of symphony.


Do you think I'm unfair for asking you this way?

Because whether they cared or not I heard a symphony anyway and I know if you're meant to love me you'll have to live with all the earthen things that mean so much more than noise to me.

Peppermint breezes by
my cheeks. I'm looking for my stars
but mine is the only constellation
out of sight.
Winter time for a summer soul and I'm
wondering if I ever
really did feel the warmth
of the sun. Fallen
leaves are no more lifeless than I
am amidst a sky not mine. Let
fingertips freeze and shoulder
blades chatter
at least my ears have heard the glow of
black waters against foreign nights.
And for that I should be forever
grateful.

Could you tell
rain
from glistening dew beneath
the shade of a
eucalyptus branch?
If you so chose
you could
listen
to me and close your soft eyes
and feel dew
like the difference
between you and me
and the dull
scent of the oncoming
rain

I am the sort
whose love will perch
cross-legged
on a kitchen counter top and
watch
the snake-tongue sizzle
of my heart
diced and flying
in your un-greased
frying
pan while you so innocently
sautee
the thick skin of what could
once have made you
cry
and run so easily
and only then will you look up
as if to say
"are you up for a little stir
fry
tonight?"

Turning circles and dancing
on blue depression glass
rosettes under my toes will never wilt
they'll never fall, never fade
never bloom

I'm turning circles and turning
back around to the last place
                    I saw you
the wind in my hair will be the same
every sight and sound the way I left it

But I'll turn circles and hear
all the chinks and tings of my miss-stepping feet
caught on the echo of your absence
and falling gracelessly over the cut-glass of cold blue rosettes