Call me when you have gasped your throat to splintered wood
Reach for me when your fingers have calloused to fractured stone
From the depths of the stoney pit of echoing isolation
When your legs hold you weary as rusted tin-soldiers

If your heart is hardening like lava reaching the ocean
If your song is submerged in a rain-on-tin-roof din
If your hugging arms are pulled asunder by monsoon landslides
If your eyes have filled with the angry spray of November hurricanes

Remember a warm hand against cold skin
Remember closeness like a heavy felted great-coat
Remember a low voice breathing fireplace hot upon your neck

Remember two hearts
Just two rib-thicknesses apart;
Two taught drums,
Beating in time
Together
In song.

As I ***** the streets of town, buildings made of grey and brown
Speak to me of people and events I still remember.
Steps upon well-trodden ways, rain makes blacks upon the greys
Painting scenes among the maze, from a long lost warm November.

We once lived on this side-street, our apartment there, small but neat
Moving in we fought the snow that came early that November.
We didn't have many things, but winters all gave way to springs,
And summer nights gave us wings to launch us into each September.

Many of them passed that way, weekdays of work and -ends of play,
Camping on cool clear autumn nights warmed to fire's final ember.
Years passed by uncounted then, new homes we found on new streets when
Our spaces seemed too small, and to the movers we'd surrender.

Walking round I see them all, the homes we made in this town so small
A lifetime spent and good times to remember.
Finally I walk o'er the hill, past the campground now quite still
To a peaceful lot just past the mill, where she went to rest one cold December.

My footsteps give me some small peace, how happiness came with such caprice
When we lived among these streets that I soulfully remember.
We loved the leaves and cool of fall, the change of seasons, first snow squall
And the love was greatest in our very last November.

The change of month took her away, how lost I felt on that sad day
How can I but hate the first day of December?
I miss her arm that fit with mine, I miss the way that her eyes shine
Just every second of lost time, since we loved our last November.

It is in that wooden place
Among the too-close trees
Under a canopy of woven reasons
That block the lancing stars

Balanced on the edge of possible and improbable
We choose from a bouquet of what-if tales
Paths to tread carefree
Always avoiding the cold shining steel
That patrols around the edges
And reflects images of reality
In a clarity
Nobody wants to see

Anyone can laud a sunny day
And lavish it with praise.
It's such an easy proposition
Amid warmth and golden rays.

But it is, I'd say, a refinéd taste,
When a day dawns bleak and grey,
To find some joy in heavy clouds
That bubble-wrap your day.

And even given pouring rain
That many see as vile
The drum of raindrops on the roof
Can bring to some a smile.

A wailing wintry driving blizzard?
Seems to most so rotten.
Yet for me I get a thrill
From a landscape wrapped in cotton.

Now a slush-and-sleet-filled day in March
Is a horrible kind of weather
I fear it seems to void my thesis
And brings to no one pleasure.

It erodes the city's state-of-mind
Optimism is diminished
Everyone is in a huff
And wants it to be finished.

Oh, for a bright day in July
With no one feeling huffy,
The golden sun to rule the sky
and clouds so big and fluffy.

On a frost-whitened afternoon
There are wet black lines through an urban park
Throngs of people pulse along paths.
As all manner of routes come alive
With tributaries of humanity.

On a warmer day some slow and linger
Pausing in the shady spots
Bodies pool there to escape the sun
And the city embodies the lethargy
Of its denizens.

Trains and cabs and buses
Corral and group clusters of humanity
Eject them out in a seething mass
Upon the sidewalks of the tallest buildings
Which vacuum them in through tiny orifices.

From the greenery filled parks
To the traffic-grazed sidewalks
From the tallest buildings
To the tallest trees
The motion of life permeates the geography.

Immersed in it, I feel my blood flowing
Without my intervention
And my lungs breathing
Without me ordering them so.
So too my heart warms
Whenever you are near.

Reddened legs dangle over the edge of summer
feet kick in time with passing rail cars
the heat of the day soaks through your clothes
yet you shiver a little at the touch
of a cold steel tendril from a bunch of yesterdays
The daylight passes in big meaty chunks now
leaving wide charcoal grill marks
and there's a ****** spilled-syrup stickiness
that persists on a spot on your forearm
Late afternoon means a silica-sand grit
when you run your fingers through your hair
And still that heavy waterlogged boot
that you can't get a hand around
sits in the hollow of your stomach
Along the sidewalk ahead now
the trees callously toss their shadows
uselessly across weedy lawns
rather than provide an ounce of shade for your path
Oh you'll see the end of all this alright
You'll come out the other side of it all
feeling for the source of the draft
under the door
to your one room apartment
and smother it there
where it lies
with the same old tattered blanket
that you used
last year.

so too the shifting powdered sands
from pulverized mountain ranges
that sift with a
whisper
through my fingers

and the planet turning
grasses creeping in
then going away again
baked out by the aging
swelling sun

but the sands still drift in lazy dunes
grains freed from their hour-glass
still shifting under foot
and warm through my fingers

and sift with a tsk
and a breathy sizzle
and melt away afterwards

as the dry touch of your
lips upon mine
on a sun-baked afternoon.