and i'll read more poetry,
and take the dog on a walk,
watch Peter at his computer,
and the bird in the pine tree,
and i'll just continue,
doing nothing
                             important
                                                  at all.

isn't this the life?
isn't it?

crawling above me,
there is a bug.
he could be an ant
or maybe a small spider,
but he doesn't much mind
what I call him.
he's above me in the sycamore tree,
and I am below him,
and the sun is starting to disappear
against the horizon.
he walks furiously to and fro,
my unnamed bug,
and he seems to be saying
"look up! look up!"
"there is so much MORE!"
so I stare at the stained glass sky above me,
feel the wet earth pressing against my back,
the grass whispering around my ankles,
smell the eastern wind taking its nightly stroll,
and I turn to say thank you to my little bug,
but he has already gone.
so I say it to the sky instead:
"thank you. thank you."
"there IS so much more"

i don't much think about time until i am with you.
until i am with you,
time drifts by like lazy mid-summer clouds,
the occasional tardy spring breeze sweeping them
slowly across a blue sky in a steady handed brush.
it cruises in the right hand lane on highway 101
as the truck horns call out in unison
and i am impatient in the passenger seat.

i want the big things to happen.
i want to pass from one state to the next
at a hundred miles per hour
and i want to feel big enough.

i don't much think about time,
but now that i am with you,
i must because
your laugh seems to stir the air into
grey and shifting images that
flit and disappear before i have painted them,
and the car speeds up and we have arrived before
my tongue has time to form the word hello
and i always thought that time was my one true god but
it is clear now,
time doesn't hold a candle to you.

i could write about the sun
or the sea
or the terrier that lives on 5th,
i could write about my dad's baseball cap
or his blue jacket that stubbornly refuses to tear,
i could write about life and love
and all those other things that poets seem to know about,
i could write about the condition of my soul
and the slight concave in my chest that steals away the air,
i could write about my favorite song,
the winding drive back from the beach,
the softness of a clean bed,
i could write about all these things
but yet,
               i only seem to write of you.

we spent all day at the river
you, me, and carl
it was the first real day of spring
and it was the last weekend before
the library would eat away at our sanity
it was the first morning in months  
where i could not find a single cloud
and the space above me was simple and blue
and the sun was good
and the river was laughing
and so were we
and even as your nose peeled
and my eyes stung
the river stones were a little lighter
and so was my chest
and you and i fell asleep in the van on the way home
wet and sun-tired

and still,
it is there.
an undeniable
and persistent
sort of ache.
the kind that sinks,
and festers,
and cries.
it is still there,
"the missing."

i killed my mother
i know it's true
she's still in mourning
for the girl she once knew