by the sea face in face
a child’s visage open
fraught in fear, freedom and friendship
predators, salt, sand
waves crash, rocks cut
chest crushing breaths
from watery garden sea sponge plucked
beside shells and stones
by a farcical display
feigning, fawning, flaunting: fearful now
petulant sand in shoe
soaks nothing better
no return, no exchange

frost laced teeth of cracked leather
course through bare back thighs
frigid sheen of yellowed ivory
caress tentative fingertips
nose, cheek and ear
incline then enquire
old smell, old sound
ancient piano sing

Three years, three months and three days
Perhaps it’s a random amount of time
But in three hours this flight will take off
Gotta take three minutes to freshen up
And look away for for three seconds
No worrying now about free pushbacks
Let’s put up memories with thumbtacks
All adds up in life’s measured advances

why are you so easy
to be walk passed
but then so difficult
to completely forget

a cattle brand that
sears waking memory
scathes dreams of night
what remains of you

are rumpled bed-
clothes at sun-up
and crumpled sheets
on litter-strewn desk

give up shallying; on finding and sharing
what could be thought of as inner beauty
when these hirsute thoughts bristle again
berating what little of self regard remains
it’s but an exaggeration to point out hate
when clearly it wasn’t my poem but myself
that lay on literature’s butcher-block altar

for whom threadbare scraps
are treasures under your table
deserts, ever undulated dunes

in picture-book perfect gales

stripping away like sandpaper
perhaps the sting of salt rain
shall sterilize this wanting within

think of me, of us, some time
bandying of thoughts will do
let them sidle up close to you
just as we did not so long ago

then come and gaze again at

the light residing in my eyes
then tell me if your reflection
shines with crystalline truth
some time, think of us, of me