We see each other
       less and less

but can we forget
       ten years

 of sight?

Do they slowly turn
their heavy threaded faces to the sun
or do they know such devotion would fade
them?

Thin metal man
     arms  opened to the
sky
wet clothes
       rust his feet.

The house so full of symmetry
light in every window in every
angle, 360º view around the bend
walls beginning to break from loneliness
the light awash in so many colors
on the canvas of the walls
the hill behind still wet with the sun's light
freshly painted themselves
Purples, Oranges, Blues
empty and yet so settled into the land
the house on the hill

An eternal, infernally short second as the car ride
shakes my hand and my impressions blur.

There she bends her fluid form, milky skin dazzled with sweat,
to pluck the golden fruit from the marble earth.
It eludes her grasp, un-bruised from its fall till
she turns her back to the finish line, to her maidenhood, to her victories
and faces all her determination to catch beautiful and artificial  
apple. Midas’ own greed pulls her into succumbing to the last of Milanion’s offerings and Aphrodite’s snare.
There in her crooked form, her robes still billowing from the momentum, sandals come undone so close to the finish line
Atalanta clutches, desperately, to win her freedom and the gleaming prize.

Yet the Gods know that only one can be won.
Aphrodite’s dove proceeds the victor as he barrels to the finish,
his wedding in sight.

There are forces that pull us straight up to face a situation. We feel the seconds lock into place, the grating of cardboard fate against our flimsy edges, our almost mindless reaction to rise up and change the story’s end.
Are we destined to be acted upon, with all the paper parts fitted from the beginning by a Great Book Binder? Disaster with its tearing claws, fear that dissolves our intentions, selfishness with it’s cloying glue keeping us rooted betwixt the pages. Or do we surprise ourselves and those divine hands full of paper cuts when we come forth, backed with our own resolve, and raise each corresponding cut out above those terrors so…

Beautifully.

An author must understand the craft
of picking such
fruit.
The patience to resolve and then
pluck
the ending, ripe on the branch.

But any reader can taste the sweetness,
Satisfying, although it leaves such a
Singular   lingering   taste
An urge to bite
   and bite
                   and bite
until only the seeds are left,
embedded in the folds of you brain,
watered by your memory, to            grow.

Though we say that reading is our escape
All readers want reality in the end
An overripe “deus ex machina”
can never                     satisfy

the craving for
a good ending.