When we were dating we’d sit in a canoe
in Jacobson park
and we’d type pages of poems
on your typewriter
using specially selected
colored paper

You’d let me steal your cigarettes
when they were half finished.

We’d sit at your kitchen table
and draw page after page
of house plans, diagrams for made up worlds,
tarot cards, poems that swirl into curlicues
Or drawings and poems that you fold and add on to,
so that no one sees them in full
until the end

We’d sit in the back yard,
on the wooden swing
sipping cold creamed coffee
from dazzling cups
I’d read to you

Or you’d tell me long elaborate stories
and I’d paint them
Or I’d tell you about the future cloth-bound volumes
you’d make of your stories,
The accompanying art and merchandise
The millions of dollars
floating by on the breeze
like fluff balls
Emanating from your
Bird’s nest hair

Or we’d lay on our backs in the dark
with swirls of orange, pink and
green lights murmering
all around,
Swelling high to the tops of the giant trees
church bells sounding
within my soul

Nowadays we sit in the hammock or on the side wall,
the morning or evening
giving us colorful pulsing planets
or slanted half moons
or neighborhood cats and dogs
Racoons, possums, crows, vultures
a cast of human characters too

Now I listen to all the inspired or
flummoxing parts of your day
you tell me what you think of my new painting
or I listen to incredible music you coax
from the piano or the $6 goodwill
children’s guitar with three strings
or the keyboard, violin or piano

we lay there and play word games
or crosswords
and drink coffee
from those same dazzling cups