Conjunctions creak, the adverbs ache,
nouns bear more than they can take.
Verbs are screaming for Ben-Gay
while pronouns atrophy away.

Adjectives have lost their bite,
possessives just give up the fight.
The subject's upset, naught agrees,
which weakens metaphoric knees.

Contractions all together moan;
the objects better left alone.
Ah, life is at a frightful stage
when poets and their poems age.

I love you in moments unnoticed
In the spaces between words
Eyes looking upward in thought
In the breaths between stories

I love you in places unknown
In the cracks on the floorboards
Tucked away in corners of the attic
In the shutters on the windowsill

I love you in time undiscovered
In memories lying dormant
Craving to awaken
In the heartbeat of life

Where others love in shouts, I love in whispers
that only we can feel
Face to face
Eye to eye
And in loving you
By sun and moon
My love grows louder by color

he lies sleeping under
the sage green sheet
on his side turned away
from me and my intrusive light

the sheet is gathers about him
like grass upon the mountain range
that peaks at shoulders and hip

at tne bead head, a tangle
of jungle vines curled and intertwined
and the sound of a bear embarking
on a short winters hibernation

at the foot, ten pebbles of varying size
attached to two size eleven boulders
of a sunbrowned material
aged by sun, surf and sand
yet on the underside
a pale pink, reminiscent
of the delicate  inside
of the finest seashell

the grass on the upper reaches
of the moutain range, waves
as the wind sighes in and out
of the bear-cave mouth
and the plains of the lower
shift in small earthquake tremors
before settling in somulant torpor

when my man mountain sleeps ,he sleeps