Fiction, music, poetry, and the occasional drawing…
The air is cool but the sun feels nice
Angels observe from a discreet distance
But there is no way to hide benevolence
Any more than I can hide my love
The breeze is soft but insistent
Rest, it says, but not too long
Eventually I will have to move
I will have to return or resurrect
Even moving toward the familiar is moving on
Even with angels as my guide I cannot escape the inevitable sky
Don’t be surprised if you see me in your dreams
I see you in mine
all of the time
And I don’t know how these things work but
I indulge the suspicion that
there might be some pathway to reciprocity
I hear the thunder in the distance
But does it hear me?
Does it know that I need patience?
I hear the leaves dancing in the trees
But do they hear me?
Are we listening to the same music?
I hear the beating of my heart
But does it hear the silent voices
asking it to slow down, or speed up, or stop?
I hear the silence between us.
I hear the silence behind every sound.
I hear the silence.
These are the voices we hear in solitude:
Confusions of reality
Desires that go against our nature
Manufactured importance
Lies told with unblinking eyes
These are the voices we cannot hear:
A call to lay down all arms
The silence of integrity
Ghosts of passions that will not die
Truth in the teeth of a powerful lie
These are the voices we cannot speak:
Kaleidoscopes of misunderstanding
Songs in newly-invented keys
Garblings of infancy
An honorable end
These are the voices we cannot avoid:
A helping hand in a bitter storm
Admitting we were wrong
Admitting we were right
Admitting we are in love
I found a hair on a book she read and knew it must be hers
Long and blonde with just a couple of curls
I thought I had lost it to the breeze when I saw it again
Clinging to the condensation on the side of a beer bottle
That temporary ornamental covering of her scalp
Grew like the leaves that sprout in spring on a mountainside
To hide the rocky winter dirt
Like evidence from the scene of a crime
Its speech small but elegant and irrefutable
A reminder – if one was needed – of impossibility
Imagine, once, that this loose strand
Was tucked behind her ear
Or twirled during a conversation
Yanked in frustration or in passion
Trimmed by an expert blade
Remnant of a thing alive
With no life of its own
Through the sunlight on another woman’s hair, I fell in love with you again. I heard a soft sound like a flute – sharp breath passing over a tiny hole – and remembered the feeling of holding you in my arms when we were both young, that feeling of holding on to everything I would ever need.
In the swaying of another woman’s wrist, I fell in love with you again. So slight. So light. It swung so freely, as if a stiff breeze could start it flapping uncontrollably, but I understood, in some strange way, the hidden strength inside the long slender fingers trailing beneath it.
Words, to a writer
Colors, to a painter
Melody, to a musician
All are mirrors of a lover’s smile
Echoes of the sounds you made when I was still in you
If you believe in the theory of time
You will understand reversal of fortune
If you believe in love at first sight
It has happened to you
If you believe in honor
Every wind will blow right through you
If you believe it mercy
You will turn fire to ice
If you believe there is more to life than what you can know with your senses
Then there is more
Even if you never find out what it is
If you believe in love
Everything will make sense
If you believe in believing
You will have as much as anyone has ever had
