Somewhere there lies, loitering 

in the distance between pen and page,

the anxiety between knife and cut,

the pause between note and

note – the death between enemies, lives

the untested, a life yet

to be conjugated

into constituents, a partial

whole of whole parts.

*

Maybe in all our persistence,

advancing

forward

our stolen inevitabilities,

we trade the certain for the sure,

the palette for the lecture.

Does not heaven bear the pernicious blockade?

The bee’s tongue waits to pollenate 

what soon will sweeten the starving

earth, and every smiling charlatan

a saint in the making.

*

Winnowing out from among the what ifs,

here-to-fors of judgements made before

the trial, the touch before the love,

is a shimmering reverie,

song of those who cannot sing.

It is the best song.

The churning stomach taut with

unrehearsed laughter.

It is the best joke.

The blanching eye, met full on

with the heavier beauty.

It is the wildest good. 

*

Somewhere there lies, loitering –

let it.

__________________________

Photo courtesy of Pexels 

Look high up into the silent ubiquity of stars

and think. A razor’s-edge sky no more,

now, just lucid memory – the skinn’d-knee’d part

of the year, draughting, droughting, doffing

her news like the chevrier’s cap

to tip toward fresher dawns.

They spread themselves

out like white currents in black jam – a deft, 

thick parade of something always bigger than

it’s last time. Daylight, tapped out, 

waits for instructions.

Who’s news wrote herself of such worthy

stock as to preen in lace-ribbon’d journals,

the fare of hired kings, hourly queens?

Let the moated whims of the fanciful

remind you of marshmallow mouths,

full-brandied, shuffling through 

the shared coastlines of care.

Look far to the dual horizons of east from west,

wrong from pragmatic, and shudder full-wing’d

in the concentrated machinery of memory. 

Is this a constancy of preparedness? 

A repetition of verses, repeated, repeated again –

enough to repeal your doubts and reassign

them elsewhere?

Lean forward looking back, standing full upright.

Tell us what you would feign otherwise to see.

I love the world as she has loved me –

she to me, a globule; I, to her, infinity.

She unpacks her bags each morning, 

with equal fanfare, but no pretense.

_

She always was a generous friend –

a giver of pleasure,

waitress to my doubt,

bearer of my pain.

And, in her bosom? That longed for, long

home-s  t  r  e  t  c  h of the driver’s road.

_

Her knowing neck waits for my tears.

She sends reminders for me to

clap the dirt clods from my dusty hands

before I scratch out memories in clouds

or bend my knees to the great silence.

Toast her first, take her elder hand, look deep

inside her intuition – then ravage seems less likely.

_

“You pinch and toss, diminish and deride,

hoarding stolen jewels for your banality.

But I’ve borne you on my back, 

wrapped you in my folded skin,

planted you in places

you’ve known, some not.

You’ve nursed these ancient breasts

into the submission of harmony,

the blessing of acceptance.”

_

So I come to rest in her scholarly pain.

There is a certain ennui in my small experience

that shows up when I meet her gaze.

And any of my rumpled thoughts or faces 

meant as caves and shields

cannot cast shadows longer than the sum of her days.

_

I smile and we shimmy down the park bench

of years and stories told and lies perfected.

And she smiles because she knows everything

I’ve forgotten or discarded

or chosen to remember poorly.

_

I’ve bruised her.

She blesses me.

I love the world as she has loved me –

she to me, a mother; I to her, a child.

You turn and look at me

maybe for the first time

or the tenth, or the thousandth time

only to see what you knew you’d find –

a man looking back, whisker’d, aging,

eyes a little dimmer but still aimed at you.

I smell your morning breath

and think to myself how perfect,

how expected, how perfectly normal

and good and welcome.

The first kiss is always best

in its unnoticed awkwardness –

maybe because of it.

The shear warmth of your body

reminds me of our shared need

for presence and company and comfort

unattainable in the strivings of our days

but remembered in uncounted moments

spread over time and times and time again.

Our sagging bodies remind us of life

lived under common skies, the unexpected usual –

and it settles into me

in a kind of daylight reverie to what is.

We make love or something like it,

and vaguely remember the youthful bump

and grind of the easier, less calendared moments,

and scoff at our glorious, happy failure.

The pieces were better, stronger, truer

but more anxious and photoshop expectant.

But this is better in all its effort

and planning, and untelevised humanity.

These moments are charged

more insistently by words boring

and daily and dull, but real

and good and dressed in old pajamas.

It is the harmony of music left to

routine and chance and time, the choir of songs

sung to the easy marching hours

and resting nights full of the brighter

skies of want made less

in the beautiful tedium of the living days.

Just about the time your legs give way

from under you, having danced all night

at a long-awaited wedding

Just about the time the advance

comes on your salary, welcome chicken

scratchings held up against a pale and hungry account

Just about the time when the last,

tired rays of sun enfold themselves

in blankets of shadow

Just about the time your increase

first parallels the centrifuge

of your necessary debts

Just about the time you roll off

your partner and unmeasured

breath matches the sound of contentment

Just about the time the needle drops

and a tiny arm caresses out music

from the dark groove of delight

Just about the time the robin sings

long enough on your lawn

to notice you noticing her

Just about the time when it’s no longer

just about the time

Then, it is enough