In Virginia, summer is relinquishing control to fall: dropping the mornings, leaving claw marks on the day, asleep in the nights

How many times has this annoyed me?

My last year, will I even notice fall in Pennsylvania?

For now, I’m begging the Virginia equinox to hold me in its arms, keep me aware until it’s too late to look back

in my head,
i’m elsewhere,
down in mexico,
on the beaches
of acapulco,
wrapped in the sun’s
golden warmth,
half-buried in sand.

in the maldives,
where palm trees lean
to greet me
and the ocean glows —
ridiculously turquoise.
it steals my breath
as i stare at a sky
robbed of ceilings.

in tahiti,
in crystal clear water,
lulled by the waves,
later, in a hammock,
a paperback droops
from my lap
and the memory of worries
is whisked away.

but it’s only a dream.
i wake to misery —
the storm outside
raging like a beast.
like a caterpillar
curled in its cocoon,
i pull the covers close
and let myself drift
deeper into sleep.

Dark and windy night,
gives way to gray untidy dawn,
the storm outside is tired, her anger spent
beating on my door with weakened fists
and barely veiled contempt,
she needs to sleep and does not want to play,
but she will have her way until the very last,
the worst of her is past, the light will soothe her cries,
dispatch her to her cot,
to think about the things that she has done,
and we may have a peaceful day,
until she throws another one

Sunlight crawls along my window
with cat paws and purring ice.

Even the queen of daylight
prefers shades of green to
the moldy gray clouds
hanging from her eyelashes.

It is ironic that a step out my door
there is no warmth in the golden orb’s
caress, yet a wink through glass
is as warm as the blanket I dream beneath.

Too cold to do more
than reach for imagination
I watch a small spider make
its trek across a windowpane and wonder
if the silk threads of its web are
a vain attempt to knit a sweater for the sun.

"Maybe when I'm older it will all come down but it's killing me now.” What am I to cling on, if even the evanescent waft fails to remain intact? A shaft of ineffable dread strikes me.

I appealed to my little nook of nonchalance, the insular of words i dwell upon whenever needed. The gentle riptide of another life-wayfinder found me well, gratefully before the mental stress saps the strength. He's at peace with himself yet at odds with the world, Whereabout reads. It resonates with my subconsciousness, for I fathom it as a tactic of abiding all the unideal, if only I were dare to live with this insurgency. In the ambient voices riddled with glib claims, pros and cons, I’m trembling, unconvinced.

In the seat reserved for me and only for me, i clenched to the sentience excluded for me, excluded for my presence at the site at the moment. The lachrymose baby disturbs and retunes the shapeless stillness that has kept me sane. I've grown acquainted with malaise. I frame it as perennial. Lament not, the crowd stays blind of what my feelings of mind afford me. “Free is feeling they can’t take from you.”

Seats away the window left me a last gate that opens to the outside world, the residue of experience, springing. Clouds scudded by, too slow, too quick. The sky was dissolving in pink and blue, a hue that consoles passenger of all kinds. Until the tilt was steered too high to see the realm not yet darkened, as if the sun departed upon the same lane as the flight did. Unpredictable weather, unconjugatable caprice.

it’s a monsoon outside today,
it made me think about us.

yesterday two cars were racing each other, one just slightly gaining past, it made me think of us.

i see 2 birds fly side by side, everyday, they make me think of you
all the time.

when can i skip to the
part where your mine again?

if you ever were at all

The coal black sky creeps slowly closer, the azure blue fleeing in its path.
Dark clouds, ominous almost overbearing, preparing their wrath.
I feel the sun on my face, defying the approaching storm.
I know when the rains come they will be warm.
Billowing clouds heavy with rain eat up the sky and soon all that was blue is surpassed.
The sun defeated, leaves taking with it all its shadows.
One by one the first spots fall, testing out the ground as if they were the storms spearheading ants.
Their message got back and with thunderous noise the colony arrives en masse.
Soon the torrents overpowers the sun-baked hardened ground.
Black as night and full of noise, like gods demanding attention, I fear they could touch me.
Oh quickly pass, this murderous rain, I crave the suns intervention.

She is my lover
Of a thousand moods.
I never tire of gazing upon
Her long lithe body,
Her head pillowed
On mountain slopes.
She the mercurial
Keeper of wind
Which come Autumn,
She will swirl just
As a vibrant young woman
Will swing a muffler
‘Round her neck.

I awoke to almost silence,
Sipped Italian roast
To chase away the barefoot dreams
Painfully afoot within my heart.
Stepping onto the deck
A tsunami of awe
Washed with wonder
My heart clean again.

The night’s stormy anger
Had torn
Every star from the sky,
Atop endless wavelets
They now adorned
Her morning robes.

I whispered her name
Wenatchee.