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I stand in the dark
& feel its hand covering
my eyes, nose, mouth.
When my daughter said
that she was terrible at soccer
but enjoyed the camp anyway
and couldn’t wait to go back,
I nearly jumped out of my chair
and boomed Yes with a fist pump,
but not wanting to risk the moment
by inserting myself in it, I simply
nodded and muttered
something benign, like that’s great,
and went back to my book
which was some self-help bible
I’d paid good money for
written by an esteemed guru
with an alphabet after his name
who’d spent a lifetime of study
to offer instruction I knew,
just ten pages in,
I’d never put into practice
while sitting on the floor
not ten feet away, playing with dolls,
was a child who’d discovered
the secret to happiness
in just three hours of chasing
a black and white ball.
Bare, blue-black mountains
Flat-topped hill in the center
Ladder rides turquoise heavens
We body surf big
waves wearing sunburnt shoulders.
In the distance, fins
break the surface. Dolphin friends,
jubilant, join in our fun.
I learned to hold snakes that first summer
on the mountain. Not with stagecraft
or raving tongue, but with concentrated focus
like a tightropewalker holding a heron egg.
I’d find them, fragile silver-edged shoestrings,
alive & nonvenmous & dozing inside a door
sweep or wiggling on a fallen branch, a curled
leaf. I spoke to them like fresh puppies.
Hello sweetheart. What’s up little
green? Staying out of the heat,
my lovely slither bit?
Baby green snakes everywhere! They danced
on my zucchini, spiraled at the foot of my claw
foot tub. Dined on banana slugs & chili-bean
colored earthworms. I said, hell yes & I surrendered.
Hello, Sugaree. Don’t be afraid.
I’ll walk around you. My sweetness,
if I step on you. I didn’t mean it.
Oh, tender lessons of my preparative
days. Yes, yes, I remember them fondly. I learned
the snake kingdom will not devour me. Virtuous
garter, I grew to adore your sweet-keeled scales.
Such a damn pitiful day for us,
roaming where we barely breathe at all,
where we launch to planets farming,
and maybe claim a country for our own
where on the caps, ice chokes all Ma’s roses blooming,
and pushes spiky tendrils up through the frost,
and wilded sweet weeds never waken to sing praises.
Bees make no honey for the children of the lost.
Yet, a moon of Phobos floating warmly up the colony’s
river branch slurried rich with farmed, flipping
minnows, leaping in Martian rust, an ochre glimmering glee, and,
in the ocean, green as sequoia needles at cathedral prayer it greets
the grey old women, firewood and clam shells tumble-armed,
with moon-scalloped cloudy pupils that remember
wolflike howling cosmonauts who desired them.
Look at those cavemen go, they said, licking their lips; shaking their hips.
There is this song I like.
where the singer calls his lover
peach.
Comparing her or you or even me
to so many beautiful things
a strangers affection
love songs and false hope and convincing promises
Id walk down the aisle to that song
Id smile and choose you in a crowded room
This song playing in my mind, and he back ground, a car speaker.
You’d be all the other things the singer tells us about
all the beautiful things.
But yet,
I am still not your peach.
you’re waiting for the tea to cool
chocolate with hints of almonds in your hot tea (chamomile),
you under about adding the zing of raspberry
you wish there was a word for thinking about someone late at night as you do usually
you’d settle for the perception of happiness to a degree
availability is the best ability you agree
often you’re held in place by inhibitions tied to a decree
damn; how hot is this tea…
ginger, turmeric, a tangerine, and honey
the last time I saw you feels like it was forever and a day, the next time I’ll see you feels forever far away
your playful with the antics, a radical romantic
make me think in pentameters that are iambic; a skin flush with beats (heart) that are frantic
I think about the cute things you do and replay them in my head
do you think this hard when you text me or just respond to what you’ve read?
we’re living in the moment of starlight is what you said,.,.,get some sleep now so you can snap me a sunrise you promised will be red
you & a mojito
you’ll go and I’ll miss you; a thought as we taste the sweet alcoholic drink that entices me to kiss you
a mojito moment makes paradise feel that much more nice with no missed cues
again, admonition of the thought that I might miss you
like on winter mornings when I can’t wake up to the smell of wet due on yesterdays freshly cut fescue
but the rum reminds me of the current fun as our lips glue; kisses like burns from the sun when you withdrew
If you think that you saw
Something in the woods
No, you didn’t, promise
