Friday, June 21, 2013

thanks.

In the darling moonlight
And wrapped up in my signature three layers,
I walked from chair to shoes
And from shoes to car
As if it were the most arduous of odysseys.
Following the staggered lines
Solely because of nagging muscle memory,
I drove to the lake,
Where summer bodies
Had left the earth for a moment,
Pulled back down to the dark waters
By only the warmth and promise of life
And the laughter of friends.

In my desperate sorrow I expected to meet the laughter again
Expected the universe to finally say “Alright,
This one’s had enough.  Joke’s over, throw him a bone.”
I expected to meet the beckoning kiss of family
That filled the mid-august air
And sent sparks through the life-giving waters.

At the all-too familiar response
That silence readily gives,
The sadness found me, my guard abandoned,
And drenched my skin.

These words, sparsely read,
And taken only partially to mind,
Are the agents of one desperate call,
Born at the unfriendly moonlit lake:
Let there be eyes that call my life beautiful

When the silence assures that it isn’t to me.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

get a room, U2.

I wait on mornings,
When the summer sun spills in through windows
In a golden wash
And silhouettes the doors with latent energy.
Inhaling the musk of grass and insects and mountain trails
From the blessed vantage point of our back porch,
The dark night hours that lay behind me
Are all but erased.

But memory keeps these afloat,
These night hours with near-drowned eyes
Wide with the sight of the cold beyond,
And calls them again
When fear deems them useful.
Fear that rises in the throat
In darkened hallways
As pale women with haunted, filmy eyes
And strangled, guttural throats
Crawl like skeletal spiders past every corner.
Morning, with her smiles
And promises of light and life,
Is yet always malleable to the dark spirits
That crouch in shadows
Surrounding the prize of heavily needed sleep,

And the fear keeps me at a distance.