All I’ve got are words my heart pours, and the ones you give in return. Do you know the strength you have yours? Please hold onto these then and learn. Won’t take long, just a few more rhymes, for once I’ll try to be concise. You’ve said them more than just a few times; and yes to me they’re beyond price. But reassurance, even I need when anxious to see or hear you. And so it’s when your words I read that I feel you feel as I do. The thought is clearest in just three, though I’ve used thousands, as you know. You use four words when you tell me, but today please end with “still,” instead of Joe. Today, I found a poet asking for poems of Reassurance, though they meant ones we’ve read elsewhere and not our own. I’m not so well-read as most poets I know (and no doubt ALL I don’t). So I sat and wrote, a labor beyond Herculean for me these days. Here’s what I mucked out of the Augean stables of my mind.
poetry
Wonder
I hope there’s Wonder left in me, something to hang my breath onto with a surprised inhalation or a long slow exhalation. Wouldn’t it be a waste of air only to sit here and respire, just in and out and in and out in some autonomic two-step our lungs dance to heart’s shuffle beat… that lopsided ka-thunk, ka-thunk? That’s why I need you in my life, kick starting my heart from 4/4 to a 6/4 beat just seeing you. Then my breath, trying to keep time, gets all tangle-footed in my throat. So I Gasp, tripping over my tongue like a little kid hearing with fright his cue to step into the stage lights to squeak out “Tidings of great Joy” in the annual Christmas play. But when I look into your eyes, I find behind the glare of pain something I’m not sure many would. I see the sparkle of Wonder. Then my heart skips a beat or two, while my lungs squeeze out a low Wowww. And I thank you for reminding me that Wonder still is in all of us but we can best find it reflected in the eyes of people we love.
Settled
I'm sitting, looking at this cloud, its top constantly shifting in winds I cannot see nor feel. I just want to reach out, grab hold of it and fly, which direction, northeast? I can’t do that, anymore, except in my once moving mind. But now my life is settled, like silt all around me, stuck in this tear-drowned dirt. Here I no longer see nor feel what I once could, when I’d grab the clouds just for that music of the wind to which I’d give lyrics for you to sing. But I can’t hear you sing anymore, either.
Another Storm, Another Day
They say that a storm is coming, but some storm’s always on its way. Clouds can gather and steal your joy even on a bright, blue-sky day. And so leaden shadow’s have come again, though my sky seems never not gray. What peeps of sun I think I see are just more baseless hopes you’ll stay. So once again I’m left to ponder why still I stand in the storm and say, “I think it just might be letting up,’ when I know it’ll never go away.
WE
How can this forsaken old cuss turn YOU and I into our own US. Hmmm, if you’re my one and only YOU, and I’m also yours, well that makes two. Then if you are your own I, let’s see, that would make me, well, my own ME. How ‘bout we closely side by side sit, so close just an apostrophe’d fit. Here’s magic just your poet might see. in which I and Me become I’M E. So maybe E and our Double-YOU don’t make an US, but a WE they do. A WE to replace those times so lonely. Sharing days to come. Oh, if only. I know I’ve been absent for too long. A lot of life interrupted your local poet from completing the daily rounds of his imagination. But I’m feeling better now and hope I can bring you (and I) whatever verse I’m capable of scribbling. This is the kind of poem that comes to one when they lie in bed with Covid and a different kind of fever no medicine can cure.
Finding Our Way from the Always-Been to the Always-Destined
What a wonder it will be to discover a new path upon which we’ll walk. With autumn on the breeze, I know how the trees will cover our tracks with now-gilded reminders of all those lives past. But wouldn’t it be another wonder to lose ourselves on a path we might vaguely recognize, only to turn around and find October’s smudged our route with its russet and vermilion hands? Soon, winter will take over that job, filling our footsteps with blank pages for us to plot and plod our way, again, perhaps away from our always-been toward our always-destined.
Willing to Receive
Such strange vessels, you and I, with more than enough inside to pour, if not overflow, but only the smallest of openings with which to fill. I know this because we’ve each tried to fill others, even one another, yet hunch our shoulders when such blessings fall upon us, as if shrinking from some fearsome storm. Perhaps it’s best that we’ve always gently shared these feelings with each other. Not wasting what we hold so dear in some great rush, but with the tenderness of a mist caressing our cheeks. And now free to feel the soft joys of receiving as well as giving each other's love.
Writing Your Name in the Dust
I dusted my headboard today and wondered, as some motes managed to cling to the Mission-style frame, if with my Muse I’ll still be sleeping as long as the next weekend or two. It’s why I hope there’s such a thing as reincarnation and our paths have joined time and again over the course of centuries. And it’s the dust of you I inhale each night, a perfume of historic affection ringing my senses with the possibilities of the endless union of more than our so, so spiritually conjoined souls. For dust thou art, And unto dust shalt thou return. That’s what keeps me a lazy housekeeper and a wheezy, waiting, wide-awake dreamer writing your name in the dust each night.
The Shadows Our Sorrows Cast
Neither of us asked for our sorrow, even if we wear it like a bespoke shroud. But Lord knows we both look intriguing in sooty black. Between the white and the silver, we appear like escaped spirits when we peek from within the folds. And I like the way you reflect the sun as I reflect on life and beauty. So forgive me if I inadvertently trip myself on your semi-sheer shadow wrap, letting it fall and revealing us both to the light that loves you as much as you love the light, and I would love to love -- out loud instead of in these peeps from the shadows our sorrows cast.
Outside the Lines
How is it you can bump my elbow without even being in the room, bringing me these happy accidents that some people think are art? How I wish you could actually come up from behind me to touch my arm, sending a prismatic shiver through your fingers into this heart. But then, you’ve always inspired me, lifting my gaze above the ordinary, the black and white of my day-to-day, moving me, touching me, as you do. Thank you for the nudge to sometimes break the rules, just a little, spreading wider the contents of this palette I didn’t even know I possessed, coloring outside, not only between, the lines.
A Thing for Words 