I wanna run to you in an airport
Like they do in 90s romance movies
Because I miss you and
I’ve been away from home for two years

I want to sit on the beach and explain the landscape that
You know better than I do
In the language it was originally loved in, that
You never bothered to learn

Why would you?
You dip your feet shallowly
Into the water instead of dunking yourself
Like I do, down up down up down
Because you’ll be back tomorrow
And I’ll spend fractions of me

Waiting for a call or a text
For 20 bucks to send you
To breathe plumeria-scented air
From the oil on the skin of your neck
For a picture of the freckles on the webbing

between your index and thumb, and the ring
That I bought you before I left so that in the pictures
you post with your white boyfriend
I’m there on your finger

So when he’s teaching you the ‘local’ lifestyle
I’m there on your finger
So when you island hop for a surfing class
You keep me on your finger, where I can feel the waves.

I want to come home but I can’t, not before
I buy you a new ring, out here
in the empty expanse of a Where’s Waldo puzzle
It has to be

Something expensive, something durable
That won’t tarnish in the island
humidity, something that your
San-Francisco friends will ooh and ahh at
Because I want to see you wearing it when I get home.

I’ve been away from home for fifteen years
I return in my dreams, but the soil
doesn’t feel right, and the love isn’t how
my mother’s father’s father described it

At the beach, lots of people swim, but no one else
Keeps their head under and lets the water breathe life into their hair.
Lets the water into their mouth, chokes, then does it again.
But I like the way you

Dipped your feet in when you watched me
Leave, on a boat chasing Troy
Venus my northern star
As I enter the storm

My boat floats through the violence,
against Poseidon’s abundant will
because my sail made up of duct-taped exam scores
And half-organized sermons
Is mightier than any of his sons

I’ve been away since 700 BCE
But you’ll still know me when I come home

i often wonder where i’ll go
or be, or stand, or bike, or row
the only thing i need to know
is where i’ll be
when the flowers grow.

        Where
          you
          are
     dreaming   
          are
     ­     you
        There

We’re in the same boat
No idea where we’re sailing
No sight of location  
For we are the destination

All roads lead here, the Conduit says.
You cannot count the infinite paths.
To fathom every touch is madness.
But, brick by brick, time after time..

This place has written its own history.

How can it be so, in such a small plot,
To spin the tales of so many?

To be the grand hall of tears and joy,
misery and folly, hope and fear?

Who would we be without it?
How are we so bound to a singularity?

We must marvel at the commonness of it all.
We must marvel and be thankful.
We must marvel but not dwell.

All places, in all worlds are the shapers of creation.