the palpable sense
that all things have a soul
that the sum of parts
is less than the whole,
perhaps our primitive brains
must make it so,
there are people and places finely tuned
to this ideal and canon rules,
though I'm a man of science and well read,
I side with those that after death
the spirit separates from mortal flesh
resides awhile as a resonance
that jitters and jives until it's a tuned
to the resident cosmic symphony.

Were you and I
to breathe that high on alter sigh
alta volta,
you cresting that last little tremble,
and I, a little withered,
held you making us a pair of linen hills.

In a manner of speaking,
we all live behind walls, me lady,
but your walls skirt fecund beds
which I've come to cultivate.

I'm struggling here,
this is the Muse's night off,
and I so wanted to gift wrap
a few heart stop words
while writing you.

Were we in Canterbury come Aprile
After the drought of March
that had pierced down to its root,
And  Geoffrey Chaucer chronicled
our pilgrimage of mutual exploration,
what naked tales would the two us tell?

You sit indoors,
under man made light,
and you say you've never traveled,
but in truth you raced a great circle
within the last twenty-four hours;
depending where your house, north or south,
a distance between zero and 24,900 miles!
and like most travelers, you're back from whence you started.

in your high chair
you must have been precocious
with your alphabet soup
up there in that lofty charthouse
piloting gluten letters
through a steaming sea of blood red tomato,
making floating islands of toki pona,
"mi olin e sina"