Your tale about the bullhead awakened me.
I stood on the seawall and set a weight on my line.
I thought about you out on the water alone fishing
Your quiet spot on Mullet Creek.

I closed my eyes and breathed in the brine,
The warm bait, and pepper plants as you
Rocked with the rhythm of ripples slapping
The barnacle coated bulkhead. The oarlocks
Snapped and resonated in your slow sway.

I watched your steady hands grip both the croaking
Fish and pitted pliers and quickly pull the hook free
As his spiny dorsal fin caught your knuckle.
You uttered a sharp ****** and placed the ****** finger
In your mouth.

I imagined my home an ocean
And my bed a ship
Tossed in storm
And the breakers screamed to the coastline
Changing the beach texture and form.

During the moments of silence
I scribbled little notes of hope
On torn paper and positioned them along
The worn paths
and Defensive Walls.

In front of the coffee filter
"give each other hugs"

On the end table  - on top of the Bible
"stop yelling"

Little pin points of light scattered in the darkness
Like children's eyes watching.

I might as well have planted
Seashells in the gritty shallow surf hoping
They would drag their feet in the sand and
Stumble upon a fighting conch or cockle.

This artwork of distance
Hand painted slowly
Abstract and weaving
Dark colors of grieving.
I was layering in loneliness
Midnight and fear
Chaotic brushstrokes
Angular but clear.
I used a toothbrush for splatter
And aged worry to your face
Covered the moon with dark ochre
Formed an illusion of space.
I placed you running through a meadow
Toward a vanishing point in the sky,
But I woke up and called out for you
When I couldn't see your eyes.

I tore a page out of a Time Magazine from 1938
To help me write a poem about discovery and loss
About an internal war over what I should have done
So long ago.
There was nothing I could do.
Now I look at the worn page -
Ephemera of what could have been
And place it back in my journal
Like a pressed leaf
Preserved away waiting
To be discovered.

Awakened 3 A.M.
By distant car tires gripping a wet road.
Like rainfall the sound of a memory returns
To when life was magnified
As the early morning breathed
Wonder through my window.

Lying under the same cool sheets
Used earlier for buildings and city streets
I drifted between two
Breathing Giants,
Moving mountains sleeping
Seconds before the sudden
Rattle of a country song
And weather report.

Outside the car tires
Take form and become a
Voice - a distant lullaby.

I made my bed
From the mud of the mire
Covered it with bramble
Thick brush and harsh brier.

I became alien and remote
Closed my eyes and my senses
Placed my head on the pillow
And dreamed of high fences.

I shrouded my body from
The cold with rough linen
Tore rocks from the ground
And fortified my prison.

Those whom I loved
Were thrown far away
And I cried at their leaving -
I begged them to stay.

And my window distorts the light
Of the sun reaching out to stir nature awake.
The bay laurel trees are trimmed and fragrant.
The house sparrow lays her three eggs
While the wind blows and spiders release their silk
And take flight.
The drone bees stage and wait for their queen to fly by over
The dust and pollen colored porch chairs we purchased last summer.