I remember a time when I
didn't have to remember a time

When butter only came in sticks.
And the trash men came every morning
When a Chevy was just a Chevy...
And my dad parked it for free
and the cops would give us a warning

Memories when freedom smelled like barbecue
and my fingers tasted like Old Bay
we crunched corn on the cob
and sat with lit faces beneath fireworks,
not watching, waiting, miles away

When it wasn't who had the bigger yard,
but which yards could be conjoined to make
the biggest football field
and our parents voices,
not cell phones, called us
to gather around the supper meals

I remember when
lawyers were great
because we hardly ever needed them
When we feared dying more than being poor
When we called them jobs,
not income back then.

I remember when an endless ringing phone
or even a haunting busy tone
required no further investigation...
because at least you knew
she was ... home

...When love meant you don't have to stop looking,
"just keep looking at me."
Because romantic love didn't grow in diversions
like weeds in fertile soils of commiseration
I remember you looking at me

I remember when you could hear me
draw a tranquil breath
between each  spoken rhyme
…rather than me listening alone
to memories tapped
into liquid -
                     crystal -
                                    diode -
                                                  lines.

I asked my mind
why it is
you I’ve come to love
A hundred reasons given me
and still was not enough

So I asked
why it is
I fell in love with you
Knowing there’s a difference
between these questions two

My mind took pause, I shook my head,
there was no answer, none
Then revealed my heart, “beloved
“Why it is,” tis enough, that
I need not count past One.”

I take in teaspoons of light
to feed the darkness…
and it still growls with hunger.

Nothing craves light
more than a shadow
with a secret it wants to show.

I dream
She lies
with her eyes open
flying fish leaping
from two placid oceans
catching moonlight
in their silver scales

I wake
She lies awake, not seeing
that I watch her
talk to God
I can tell from her fathomless gaze
And I am amazed
at how far her eyes
can see

She lies, I lie
woken in each others eyes
My pond, her ocean
I drift – in her devotion
to seek beyond measure,
Yet it’s not the conquest
of her vision
but the silence
in her surrender

She lies awake
dreaming
My eyes opened,
Sleeping.
At sea, it’s
us three,
an angler of stars
the Beloved
And thee

She’s underhand throwing words with her mouth
The boy leans in past natural borders, to study the agenda in her eyes
He is built like a bent paperclip,
with bottlebrush forelocks, a barracuda jaw.

Between her bare legs, she gently squeezes
a cup of iced hibiscus tea.
She reaches down and lifting it to her lips,
I feel mine part, in thirsting sympathy…

Her upper thighs blush wet with condensation as
The boys eager fingers click on her knee,
like ice cubes in her sweating berry hibiscus,
floral melt cascades down her throat.

Fairy breath lands on my shoulders - my silk overcoat
It makes me dissolve with memory
of my beloved tea picker,
a cocoa skinned Sudanese girl
traveling the road to market in Al-Junaynah,
swaying in the truck bed under a warm sun,
dreaming of red karkadeh flowers
and a paper clip boy.

There is a moment before the sun sets,
just before the top of its crescent
disappears below the farthest edge of the earth.

It is a divine promise of yet another
smoldering spectrum of burnt orange,
crimson and cobalt.

A promise of the days last warmth
before night calls us to dreams...
before we smile,

knowing, with the reminder on our skin,
that tomorrow, the sun will come up again,
only to leave us with this pristine moment
once more.

Such splendid sweet endings to a day…
never to melt into the same horizon...
never to burst with a less spectacular display of Heaven.

This is hope, tumbling over and upon itself...
writhing like eddies, lost in the directionless winds...
this amazement is just God,
sighing into the end of our day.