my words fade
faster than  
footprints on sand
or snow on a hand

My heart
is a landmine
and your footprints
are
all
over
the
place.

021217

This beautiful night, dark with drizzle,
My lines you stole, started to whistle,
The wordless song fresh and tuned,
The music in air stopped then resumed...

My foot inside your foot prints,
I would take a million tiny steps,
Enveloped in the breeze that embraced you,
Eyes closed, pure and secure...

I want to walk
with you.

I want our footprints
along the ocean shore.

I want you to
look at me the way I look at you.

Except that just like those footprints,
your love for me has disappeared.

(-DF-04/304/16-)

I. (Yesterday)

I  was here crying
Wanting to kiss your footprints
Washed by the sea waves

II. (Today)

I'm back to this shore
To trace your footprints once more
But they're gone away

The footprints closest to the sea,
leave the deepest impressions,
but are the fastest to be washed away.

The wagon was red
The sky coughed dewy smoke
Footprints in the mud

for Robin

On that frosted January day,
     you and I hiked north
along the Mississippi shore
     on a trail marked well before us.

Footfall tapestries etched in snow
     wove tales of assiduous commerce
of hosts of fur-cloaked cousins:

the playful step-slide gambit of an otter -
      rabbit paw tracks by the score.
A bald eagle soared above singing ripples
      in quest of a mid-day meal.

The distant staccato cadence
      of a pileated woodpecker
          echoed off the limestone bluffs
on that January afternoon.
     Dusk-light washed the western sky
          in pastel gold and crimson hues.

A coal barge heading south
     thundered against the floes,
scattering ice across the channel,
     then vanished beyond the bend.

And we like bargemen at their tillers,
     set our southward course
retracing footprints in the snow -
     back to the world of clocks and enterprise.
January, 2011

This corner I'm in
I painted myself into it
But the difference between
Us
And Them
Is that we have no problem leaving our footprints....

~J Nc
9-'15

Together, they built footprints on the
sand, mud, clay, floor
and even on each other's heart.
They took thousands of steps
to keep love running.
Then one of them stopped.
Perhaps,
tired
wearisome,
running became senseless.
They both knew,
it won't keep going.
As they separated ways,
one, took a hundred steps away.
While the other, for only one step away,
and still hoping for a familiar footprint to follow.


*-Steph Dionisio, August 24, 2015