You are the bastion of mercy;
my armor I adorn
I shall know you as serenity
As silence in the storm.

Naves Relictis

Love, as it happens,
Is not not declared by a thunders strike
But suggested on a whisper

Nor is it bound in its possession
but through those thimbled sips
And parting glances
as you head toward the door

Salt. Salt dosed with a hint of peach and hickory
or a cool wind just after Twilight.

A woman lost, spoke from the side street: "What of faith
(even those tagged on the walls of alleys or along abandoned houses)
when the hold of softened hands
are drawn apart as they inevitably are?“

Respond:
But what of the guarded lust of parted lovers
Or the peace of a Sunday waking?
the whispers of things as they tremble by
are the quintessential sip
that faith could only envy.

Be there life after death
I shall look for you there
If not, then there too

An autumn whisper
is the sleepy cicada
of a season lost

Our histories words all but lost
like tender garden yield to frost
so fallow, feign your fettered fear
that surer stalks can pierce the air.