Your thumb a deep oval
at the base of my neck, still smoothing
fingers snake and entrap coils of my hair.
My love my person my someone
he presses so gently as we burn
but to freeze for a moment,
eyes two parallel solar lamps.
Then groan, holding onto his head
as we, in slow motion, escape.

First toes, then knees absorbing,
Lap, lapping.
Arms in motion,
hands still gripping as I stoop and
my board finds her ocean cradle.
Hands on deck.
Wade out, shuffle smooth as
my cool clear sanity rises up from
the earth and caresses my chest, wet.
Toes and arms again
but this time shoulders too
and I am up, out, on
laying on.
Pressed panini --
      cool cheese wedge melting into steaming cut.
But peel kneel bend branch
and in a moment I am
so UP
reaching up, balancing up, up, up,
then scoop, paddle plunging
gurgling slurp of drink rattles chest.
Water for this thirst.
Cold compress for the earth.

Inhale.  Interlock
legs toes eyes tongues
curl
arms hair lips necks.
Beat beat.
Beat beat, beat beat.
Quickening, stiffening,
plunging, confessing
; gasp ;
am nothing
but a milky white shape
as I lay myself down
in the dark.
Exhale.

How selfish are my ambitions
and trivial my thoughts.

The trees never ask,
they only give.
Holding the air, like a lover --
                                          sweet.

Your smell inhabits my heart
and your spirit walks beside me.
You never contained this capacity to love so sweetly.

Nature has an intimacy within itself
that lovers could only ever hope to hold.

I understand why a poet would live
                  apart from man,
but apart from nature?
This I could never fathom,
wouldn't
hope to understand.

Often, I feel that I live between the moments in which I hear the sound of gravel and grit beneath my shoes.
Or the stirring silent feeling of moist earth beneath the soles of my soul.

All my thoughts in their garments -- they clamor for attention.
They clatter and cluster and craze the inner cupboards of my head.

But the trees and the wind --
  if I stop for but a moment and wipe away the wimperings...
            I hear sweet and solemn
            the secrets of the world.
          Most remain chaste in their mysteries;
          they bear no qualm, yet not a reason
          to speak to someone as present and passing,
                                             so here and not yet there,
                             someone...so like me.

How is it that two people could dash at each other and just as quickly veer apart
like a pair of magnets, reversed upon contact?

I'd say that the feeling is unique, but it has been tried on by so many others.
The piece that has threatened to puzzle me is: how long must I wear this garment?
Will it suffocate me till it tatters to rags, and I too am ragged and old?
Or will I only wear it for special occasions --
like a painter putting on old clothes?
If I could wear you again,
would it come back fresh?
The knowledge and realization that life -- this formulated life that we are programmed to live is but a dream.
Would I stop with you again?

I am on a fast-moving train and I can't get off.  If I did, my life -- as I have planned it out -- would fall to pieces.  But would a new path unveil itself?  A road strewn with garbage and nights slept in uncertainty, yes.
But perhaps an alternate life that I secretly want but am too afraid to accept.

But no, this will never happen.
Sometimes if you stay in one place too long, disgust begins to bloom like mold.

Why is creativity like the sea
crashing and retreating into infinity?

Oh, if it were constant.
But what is constance?
    Unlike the sky with its everchanging colors and moods.
    Unlike the trees --
     their leaves, they change
      roots digging
       bark peeling, healing.
    Unlike the beasts --
     birthing and dying,
      evolving and migrating.
    Unlike people --
      they grow, they sink,
       their hearts become tattered,
        their bodies defeat themselves.

If only I were constant.

But I am as floating as last year's love.  A love so craved -- a love we ran for and caught up with.
But we ran too fast; our breaths dashed, our ankles cracked.
You asked me why I ran, and now I say to you --
                           why don't you?

I wrapped my hands up in your hair
to feel the pulse - your heat, your beat.
I reach again
feel naught but air:
the essence of a love,
retreat.

Often do I venture back,
roam into an abandoned past.
Dis-embalm these memories true,
packed on ice
yet damp with dew.

Cat treads heavy the surface of heart,
imprints
      indenting,
              g,         d
            n             e
           i                 s
         d                   c
        n                      e
       e                         n
     c                             d
   s                                i
a                                   n
                                       g,
scarring my thoughts, my rhythm,
my whole.
Shifting my sacrum,
sheathing my soul.

Doggedly I trail behind
with a twisted eraser
      just "try the eraser"
      you said with a smirk.
But still I reach and I reach and I reach
rapt in your attentions as a wave to a beach.

There is a grain of sand in my eye
that can't be washed away.
Salt, fresh, spring
they all caught her.
But I've tried every type of water.

Still you persist,
a rotting orange's mist.

I allowed you to come; I also let you leave.
I remember with crude clarity
what happened in between.

Go, my love you let.
Go, your love I let.
The only question now I have:
Why then can't I forget?