I threw a stone across a pond
and noticed it not sink,
which made me skeptical.
So I made another choice
and threw, this time
drowning my intentions.
A wake, rippling waves
at a minutia of knots
across the skein of time.
An open book,
written with words I’ve never known,
I teach myself to read
in stops
and starts
and stutters.
But reading is it’s own reward
and learning loves no other,
so I turn another page
and slowly lose my stutter.
In learning words
I learn to love
their careful application,
their oh so perfect placement
and delicate dictation.
After I’ve turned every page
I’ll read again, most every day
to know that all the words within
grow finer as they age.
When I think of you, amongst the throng,
you’re a shining light, a heartfelt song.
You’re the clay that binds my bricks together.
You’re the education that makes me clever.
You’re every smile I have inside.
You’re a slender bridge across a great divide.
You’re every other different thing.
You’re every song I’ll ever sing.
You’re everything that’s good and free.
You’re everything, just that, to me.
The sun’s glare tears through the orchard’s canopy,
dapples grass and leaves.
A first budding presumption of nature
hangs fragile from a lowly bough.
Quiet expectation,
nervous anticipation,
unknowable excitement,
percolate and permeate its juvenile core.
As sun and moon play catch and kiss,
celestial chase of aeons,
presumption steadies,
and nature’s bud grows, more sure
of its place in the world.
The chase continues
but the pace slows.
Our bud, ripe and red,
no longer juvenile,
but strong and lush,
rocks and readies
for the fall of age,
and leaps.
The distant world rushes forward,
eager to greet, anxious to meet
nature’s daring presumption,
who unprepared, is battered and bruised
by the world’s callus enthusiasm,
thuds and rolls,
stops and lolls.
A last vestige of nature’s presumption
sits fragile on the leafy ground.
Peaceful degradation,
slow degeneration,
last disintegration,
permeate and percolate its senile core.
The world rots away
as sun and moon
catch and kiss and play.
The night moves so fast
but they stay the same.
Always the same.
That’s the thing
about people,
they only change
the skin they’re in,
not the frame.
I lost my favourite jacket,
the one you gave me
in the cold.
‘It looks better on you.’
You said it smiling,
that was warmth enough.
All I have left of you
was stitched in its seams
and worn across my shoulders.
Now all I have left of you
can’t keep me warm.
‘Drama queen,’ she says
and smirks in that way
that means more
than the words she uses.
Sometimes I catch her
looking at me,
as she does,
with just a hint
of mischievous mystery,
and I wonder,
as I often find myself doing,
what goes on behind
those gorgeous green eyes.
When I was younger man
I made castles built of sand
and cried when they got wet.
I watched and wept
as my dreams turned to mud,
my crenelations crumpled
and my ramparts ran to ruin.
I wallowed, worn and wary,
wondering what if?
But now I stand on surer soil
and I’ve built a better building
from more meaningful materials
with dreams that don’t destruct
at the sucking of the sand.
How is it that you keep me
so completely in your thrall?
With so few many sentences,
with so few words at all.
When even from such distances
the silence seems to speak.
I hear your voice inside my head
and feel my knees grow weak.
You’ve become my favourite moments
even when you aren’t around.
I don’t think you understand,
that your impact’s been profound.
I know I’ve never felt this way,
or felt anything at all,
when even from such distance
I’m completely in your thrall.
There’s a mystery in her eyes
I want to solve, to see dissolve.
I want her eyes to look at me
the way I see her smile
snap like lightning
across her face
and illuminate all around her.
It’s so hard to leave
when you’re lying there,
almost bare, supine, divine,
with soft warm thighs
and deep wide eyes.
Lips that part invitingly,
inviting me to stay a while,
to kiss your smile
and tour the contours of your skin.
To draw you in with eager hands.
To feel you, hold you,
let my arms enfold you.
To mend the schism
wrought by my decision
to get up and out of bed today
instead of stay
and play with you,
a game of words
that leaves me breathless,
strips me speechless,
submersed in the sublime,
removed from time,
panting, warm,
and satisfied.
Hands that seek and find with ease,
a thing thought lost, some inner peace.
Lips that search the midnight dark
and meeting generate a spark.
Enough to power all the world,
or so it seems, for when unfurled,
this peaceful, placid passion,
while not demure within it’s fashion,
is still somehow so relaxing,
a gentle love that is not taxing.
Even let me dare to say,
that when this paring has its way,
the world will see it’s for their taking,
a universe that they are making,
of hands that search
and lips that seek,
of minds that match
and hearts once meek,
rejuvenated by each other.
One simple thing,
the perfect lover.
It resonates in the silent, shared,
pared-back comfort of company,
in the affluence of affection
of an arm around my waist
and fingers laced to hands
so sweetly sewn together,
palm to palm, so calm whenever
they chance to find the other.
There are pictures in a gallery
I curate in my mind,
they’re made from words
and hung with twine,
and in these perfect pictures,
I can see that you are mine.
A radiant array of rhetoric,
carefully composed,
clad in colored consonants
that leave my heart exposed.
A simple skirt of syllables
that sits on slender hips
and slowly draws the eye
from waist,
to chest,
to lips.
A portraiture of poetry,
hung on haiku hair.
Laconic, lilting, lyricism,
like sonnets made from air.
I can tell you the moment,
the first time I fell,
when my stomach jumped
and my heart skipped,
when I felt my shell
crack, crumble and fall away.
I can tell you the moment,
though it happens again
a dozen times a day
and each time like falling,
caught by the thought of you.
A Few Short Words 