Reading at the bar
Drinking at the library
         —Henry Chinaski

We've sailed cerulean seas to pastel shores,
Known only to the glorious few,
We have disembarked, ready to explore,
As our lone ship waits slumbering in view
of the glorious bay. Light paints daybreak
across the sky. We see the rising sun
through imagined jungle—and hesitate:
The image lingers, but it must be done,
Eyes close. Toward the interior we turn
remembering, and hoping to return.

I hold the tool. I am the blade. I drive
myself into the fertile ground. I dig
potatoes out. They were buried alive,
but in darkness they thrive. Now the old pig
will feast. When he grows fat I will slay him
to feed me and kin. I don't like killing
but when necessary it's not a sin.
I shall live another year, God willing.
I have long been on the land. I am old
but my sun is not yet setting in the
sky. When I was a child I was told once by
my father you become earth when you die.
If so, I hope my children carve my chest
with blade. I hope I'll yield a fruitful harvest.

To look up,
And see the plane flying past,
Is to conceptualize,
The distance between us.
We may sit together on the swing,
Winter slowly rolling in,
And talk,
But we speak in different temperatures.
Your words condense on me,
And drip down my body.
Shivering we see,
That we are separate seasons,
Never again to exist coincidentally.
There will always be,
The distance between us.

I've a clever little friend
who guides me to
a world of neverend
where all the twists of fate
are twine
wrapped around my compass mind
pointing north
or in
or through
an acute tangle of you
th—

Staunch, we bear the wind.
In all it’s whirling fury,
we are unmoving.