When I think of the south,
It’s Coltrane by the river,
It’s the sweat on my neck,
How her arms hold me
like a mother with her child,
The smiles of strangers,
It’s not knowing where to be
but welcome at every door,
It’s the music in the breeze,
My warmest of beds,
Oh how her sweet songs
breath life back into my chest,
All of her bridges,
The waters beneath them,
Carry me back to the beginning,
Back to the orchards
and the light between the leaves,
What a wonder this place is
How could I ever flee.

Distance is defined as:
"an amount of space between two things or people."
yet even though you are less than a mile from me,
I feel everything and an ocean between us,
The choices made were our own paths
The destinations have always been known
I do not blame anyone for this
But the expanse of this space is always on my mind,
Some days I wish I could stretch my arms back
to a time before all of this, and shake the sense right out of my bones,
and relive those golden memories we once held so dear

The clouds grew heavy
Their bellies swollen with rain water
They stared at me as I glared back,
My gaze split the sky like a knife
It poured for days.
    
   *  I was a mess,
     I was soaked,
     I was a sponge.*

I tried to ring out all the excess,
All it did was leave me drowning in a puddle
of the parts of myself I no longer needed,
My air tanks ran dry
My body felt heavy
I was sinking for years.
It was hard for me to watch the ones I loved
lowered 6 feet beneath the soil,
It was even harder to look in the mirror
and see a breathing corpse stare back,
My insides were withered like the winter,
All I craved was the heat,
The south was a distant memory,
Fluttered away so many years ago
on a night with the full of the moon and the big of the sky
The sweet song of the willow in the most humble of tunes,
Oh how I have grown now.
Look how these bones have changed.

I showered in the storm
I drank the nectar of a dream
Feathers grew between my shoulder blades
I took flight with the angels
Let the sun burn its embrace upon my skin
I once believed heaven stood above the clouds
That if I flew high enough the gates
would be somewhere amongst the birds
Now I wait for the clouds to come
Their figures hanging heavy
Something to give the earth a drink
I’ll collect the left overs in water glasses
And pour them out for all my dead friends
So they too can be content in paradise

The months have come and gone like public transit bus stop mornings
I hopped on somewhere last july and haven’t gotten off since,
My legs wrapped around the faded yellow seats,
Hunched over the rails ahead of me as I rest my bones a little while longer,
The cities have passed by one by one, the breast of the country lies bare and wide before me,
I watched the birds soar as the wind carried their wings from place to place
Relaying the messages between the two rivers,
Both dreaming of the other, so many miles between them, how they swell with longing,
Graveyards bloom with wild flower memories, every one addressed to a lost lover,
Ive traveled so long now that these demons stopped biting at my heels,
So long it’s been since I stretched these weary legs, so much distance between now
and who I once was.

Faded white brick
Potted plants
Crooked door
Wonderful rain,
You bring life to this old body
Taking the noise out of my floorboards
Putting the meals back on my table,
So long it has been since life has
flourished under my roof,
So long it has been since this
rickety frame has felt loved.
The rain forced their faces back inside
To this place they claim to be a home,
I smile on as my colors peel with every grin,
Thank you for this.