One touch
Calls forth reality
Just a glimpse
Caught off guard
Never much
Walls with a moment of clarity
Of clearest quartz

Windows to the smokey undertones
Dried bushes of roses
Wilted, with petals to the wind
Stained stones
Line the path down
Into the endless pits of brown
Like bark of a tree
Or perhaps nutrient-rich soils
Of a secret garden
Watered with internalized rains
Never to flood out with great pains

In the garden
Shielded away
Is a pond of fish playing coy
Above tangling reeds
Only they stay
Protected from hands that may destroy
Or perhaps to brush against the hand that feeds
Light filtering through the green curtain

Buried beneath roots of reeds
Lies a chest of steel
Painted with winged steeds
Ghostly figures, perhaps once real
Locked with a strange mechanism
To which there is only one key
Of the strangest sorts
Perhaps lost to time
Or kept close as can be
Just out of sight

- Jay M
February 5th, 2021