Still

Does a breeze whisper in that hair? 

            Still?  Does it call attention to darkly tamed locks,

            threaten to release them back into natural fury?

Does a raindrop crawl slowly down the side of that face?  

            Still?  Does it catch for a moment on that lash and fall into

            the arrival of that child’s smile dimple?

Does summer’s heat run a salty drop down that back?

            Still?  Does it tease that ivory spinal stretch, bring a shrug of

            that silked shoulder in response to an unseen caress?  

Does a winter snowflake cling to the toe of that boot? 

            Still?  Does it twinkle coming in from the cold, dying

            at those feet, calling attention to insulated beauty?

Does the sun spill into, reflect out of, those eyes? 

            Still? Does it proclaim, telling unkept secrets, showing to all

            how brightly blue can burn?

Does the moon, the shallow moon know? 

            Still?  No, I will not ask.  I know.  I know that moon

            and she knows.  She knows she at night must borrow that radiance,

            that satin sheen that renders her stolen sun serene. 

Does that sigh, that tear, or that touch recall?  Does that life or that soul,

            or that shimmering night, remember?  Still?

Inspired by Lucinda Williams I Envy the Wind 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iJEITyWmqA

Inside Outside

She brings calm anxious aura

            when there is no reason, nothing more than a day

            pushing my pace frantic, rushing day to minute to second to…

Then arrives abrupt isolation, a silent demand for focus

            on her, her moment. 

She comes so foreground centers, background blurs

            to no perspective no depth, and as I breathe

            that in which she moves, her peace takes me

            from a world dissolving outside of us.

Inside my head my mind my thoughts race so,

            so that perhaps all else seems, is not, may not be frozen haze,

            but merely lost to the madman inside.

He runs to a thousand places in my head,

            keeps her talking, smiling, keeps her there while

            within that eight cylinder fire-breathing dialogue rages.

“Why’d I say that and what do I say next and shut up and listen and

            God, she’s listening to me.  She is, she is, AND SHE IS!!!”

She’s making me feel what’s been so long and dead since,

            since that’s been there or anywhere. 

And is it her?  Or is it what? Or is it that she makes me feel          

            that for which I have longed without knowing longing?

Can I, might I, do I love her for that and nothing more than I feel again

            uncomfortable feeling uncertain, questioning myself,

            why is, why is not my conversation comfortable cohesive coherent?

Why think these things, ride this storm

            while she simply smiles?

The Drive Home

Early evening Easter Sunday I drive
Home.  Westbound on 316 with the sun
     hard on the left too low for the visor,
Too high for the trees.

Twenty year old shades (retro-cool?) cover my eyes and present a world

            earthy rich in green gold brown tones.



My road home twines over rolling hills, lazy with views, sporadic views
     of a hilltop before and another in the rearview, a mile away future and the past
A mile behind while waiting atop the present.

Fresh spring greens of broad leafs blend smoothly

With forever darker hues of Georgia pines, creating shadow mirages
     where no shadow lives. 
Wild flowers and berries dot median and meadow with arbitrary splashes
     purple, blue and raspberry.  Sideways sunshine fires brown grass, three days mown,
     golden 
Spring sunshine has not the heat to drive the cows to shade,
They stand or graze, a careless collection of white and black bovine bulks. 

While stopped by one of the lights spaced miles apart,

I see a tree, a symmetrical form with no limbs for ten feet of dark bark
     that explodes on top into unlikely shades of shocking sumptuous generous
     green gifts of spring storms. 
Lush grass rushes startling wildflowers up to its base.

A dark shady patch hugs the base of the tree, then juts wildly away, fleeing the sun,

     A vain attempt to mingle with coming night. 
Every river reaches the sea, but not enough shadows reach the night
     arriving too slowly, leaving too quickly.   

I see you there

     as engine hum and tire whine on pavement fade. 
There is now bird song, life in limbs above dissolving distant highway hiss
     a mile removed now-no, more. 
You are beaming smile and impish grin.
You are supple skin and lightly blowing hair. 
You are soft rustle cotton and denim and leaves. 
You are dancing eyes that see
     only me and things that together we allow into this pasture world.
You are earth scent and tart wild raspberry and soft honeysuckle’s
     delicate dance. 

You reach out, take my hand and I take my place

     my only place, beside you. 
We drink wine and nibble fruit and crackers and cheese and newborn air and springtime. 
We breathe in each other and we breathe out smiles and secrets of
     lifetimes lived in mere moments. 
We bathe in slanted sunlight, melting into the dewy desperation of twined arms and legs
     and heated passions and too full chests.  

I think I wish I pray this never ends- this tree and pasture and grass and moment

     exist only here and only now and only for us. 
My life and time and humble being surely shall never know a finer moment,
     more ripe with all the fruits that man or gods have imagined.
Unless perhaps in dreaming?  If I dream now, why then not dream forever?
Why then not this be forever? 

Some impatient horn honks and I step on the gas to move the road beneath me, knowing
     This imagined moment must be,
     will be
          for me
                  our forever. 

Photograpy courtesy of Red-LetterImaging. Visit http://www.red-letterimaging.com/

Dreams Die Soft

      I don’t know who first said “Dreams die hard.”  I’ve tried to find-OK, I Googled-where or from whom this may have originated but find no original attribution.  From wherever it may have come, it’s so permeated our vernacular that it now sits somewhere between cliché and trite. 

      That’s not intended to deny that there is truth to it.  But what really happens to our dreams?  Do they really come crashing down, falling in on us and in an instant change the direction of our lives forever?  Yes, that does happen and you can take it from a man who has had such an experience.  While the dream itself is of no consequence to anyone except for me, I once found myself pulled over and puking in the emergency lane of an interstate highway a mere 15 minutes after finally accepting a dream’s demise- a jarring and permanent and profound death that was eulogized only by vomit on the highway and about two years of drinking too much.  (Call it a lost long weekend.) 

      There have been others that were accommodated in what I daresay are less dramatic ways.  Sleepless nights?  No appetite? Withdrawl?  Anyone with any life experience at all knows the list and can probably add a few more items of self destructive behavior to it.  My point is we know what’s happening and we deal with it via many avenues, healthy or not.  The big ones, anyway.

      But what of the million little ones that together may have changed our world just as profoundly?  They sigh and die silently.  They drift around us, a snowfall within which each flake is so delicate and alike from the outside, yet unique from within.  They dance around us on wings of whim and want.  They swirl and sparkle, fighting against their white almost-weight.  They move us and sustain us and inspire us to have new ones. 

      Yet as one inspires another that inspires yet another, we become unable to focus on them.  And without attention their almost-weight becomes real and the light that gives luster begins to dull their edges.  Their buoyancy and beauty slowly abandon them as the dreams softly settle to the ground, nestling with others of their not quite the same kind.  There the lucky ones lie until reborn as a still pure raindrop in the springtime.  They will live again as another dream of another dreamer.      

      The rest?  They are trampled underfoot into a grey slush of blurred years and sapped spirit and weary apathy.  They’re stamped off of your boots and left forgotten on the stoop.

      Do we determine their fate?  Yes!  So select dreams carefully.  The frivolous can crowd out the more worthy.  Nourish them.  Move toward them.  Speed is not as important as constancy.  In order to pursue them, one cannot fear them.  Some of us appear to prefer the dream to its realization.  As comfortable as it seems, that's fear and fear paralyzes.  And as action begets action, so does paralysis.

      Finally, speak of them.  Giving dreams voice makes them real and forces us to confront the disconnect between our lives and our dreams.  It shows the difference between where we are and where we need to be.  

 

 

Photograpy courtesy of Red-LetterImaging.  Visit at http://www.red-letterimaging.com/

Broken Night

Feeling too much…
How can I
     and how does this happen? 
Fragments of a beautiful broken night are here now
     with things I’ve mined or thought or that stuck to me
From something somewhere someone. 

I found flaws in darkness, flaws saying

     there never was or is or will be
Silence.
And prayers, my prayers?  Plaintive pleas to some forever flawless,
     Unspoken solemn screams
     at peace?  To…

A single thoughtless murmured murder,

     meaningless, a word a sentence a hush,
     and static speaks static.
But still
     a hundred unknown ends, fickle little life echoes
     follow.

But does my soft killer lament the death?

Wish to take it back?
Does the thief regret the theft,
Or faithless lovers passion’s act?

I know now the mingling of blood-pump frost

     and wondrous warmth of you, of me. 
When careless flashed your knife in the darkness,
     my natural noire spilled private passion
     into that brutally broken night.