blue like enamel cups
unbroken sky
dry cold
flecked in snowflake
from no cloud

feeling the weather
patterns shifting
stretched skin
flexed flesh
over no bones

the marrow is the changing

the days passing
and laughing at calendars
no malice
like a grandmother
teasing
the child of her child
teaching

the trash picked up from the street
the newspaper not
three days old
left behind
in cold
dry

Breathe.

Settle yourself.

Try to understand.

We were meant to love.

And if we can not love, then we were meant to try to love.

And failing that we were made to breathe.

And try again.



-Sean Critchfield

The bar in the airport
watching people
                    watching people
the habitual movement
tracing shapes in space
                there are others
        there waiting, fist clenched
hard breathing

          I am those people.
   I was born of habit,
           & some say LOVE.
A circle still enchanting
    after so many go-rounds.

May the gods not let me
  drift into apathy.
    May I find homecoming
       in the center
& act as an example
   not a guide.

Lover mine,
   give no worry our parting.
In few moons
        with the Earth's spinning
   steady will I hold you again.

Lover mine,
     I see your trick to the eyes
   side line look, a surprise to
catch me in the act          laughing.

That flash, your face
******* in a gasp,
   Lover mine.

Two smiles makes a circle of us.
Me chasing you chasing,
catching we & clasp to the breathing.

                        Quickened,  heaving   Sea
                             oh we...

     This I will not miss,
for I will see it in the warm
sleeping, feel in the waiting
     visions of memory,
       keeping company
               in secret.

I will be
      ever on the other side of
       your thinking,
              your wakeful burning urges,
           pressed against them
                 until next time,
                             Lover mine.

Looping, arching
solar storm bridges,
out into dark,
from one pole to another,
of the same sun stuff.

Magnetic pressure builds to
giving.
Another place,
pressure-less,
accepting, empty hands, bowls
to be filled
& filled until
breaking & letting go
to the
ground
into outer space, sharing.

A circle in a circle.
Concentric stage,
matter/motion actor
playing both parts.

filling in the backside of
this page
space
space never wasted
no waiting
    only patience
                & a breath
   a wipe the brow for
the next pick swing
     shot in the
                         dark
                                   space
making this page
this poem

           pause     & consider

      itself
as related to the reader...