Late in the evening we chew over
     how to foil dilemmas and conflicts

Does resolution come from
     defending my ground

Or by being sure I establish
     your guilt

Is life like a court
     of law

Or a platform for
     debate

The answer may be
     far afield

In an arena where shared
     feelings and misperceptions
     trump facts

Where love is honest enough to yield
     a renewed commitment

Tonight is a cluster of
Recognitions, remembrances
Mostly reminiscence
Which sift in the breeze
Gusting beneath the temporary
Tarpaulin tent

Backs are slapped
Arms embraced
Smiles predominate
As shiny faces and gleaming  foreheads
Illuminated by flashing cameras
Twinkle like fireflies displaying
In a muggy June meadow

Photos pulled from stained
Billfolds move from hand to hand
Displaying glossies of babies, graduations
Weddings and “The big catch”

Relatives, friends and officials
Find their place on folded metal chairs
For a wedding ceremony

Tonight has become a gathering

As pen rubs against paper
What is the purpose
To illustrate, with words
All that is within

Emotions imprisoned
Have feasted on my flesh
Now released to you as
Impressions on a page

Let me send them
To you, to others

Let us see if anyone
Has the compassion
To take them in
To live with them
As I have
Embattled, alone
At war with these
Unfulfilled passions

Walking on a river’s bank
Looking inward
I pause with fear

Turning over rocks
May not
Soothe my heart

There may be mysteries and
Fears waiting
Amid joyous realizations
Waiting in the warmth
Of the ground

Sensing what is about me
Intaking all that is
Allowed to transform
Like I’m pumping
an accordion’s bellows

Breathing in and out while
Each of my senses
Alerts me to what
Surrounds me

I want to feel those things
That are pieces of me  
But do not define me

The sheets are cool
Upon crawling inside
Unlike your continual warmth

A lullaby soothes me
Welcoming my dreamworld
Perhaps infancy is approaching

Over forty years
Beside legs willing
To entangle

Whoever thought our nights
Would become my
Emotional sustenance

We're supposed to care
in the pits of our hearts
and review in solemn
exactitude the magnitude
of little things we did
as kids

Try to recognize this
exsanguinating loss
and watch as what you were
is cast to disappear in past's
prolific mists

so vast they dwarf,
they drown us: caring as we are
in hearts' pits.