A Thousand Years

cover the sky with your hand

the summit of your palm is the moon.

Your fingers are streams of stardust

sweeping across ancient dunes

or the slender branches of willows

gliding through desert sand

soft and sediment.

Your words sting like bees that linger

thawing like ice on your tongue.

The heart of every woman you have

loved lives inside me

the cracking bones of beating wings

resounding against fixed walls

whispers of moments come and gone.

Recall my eyes as time,

you have lived here a thousand years

To Get To You

In this dream my arms

are the branches of trees

and you are my nourishment.

Cut me down to a boat.

My spine is a sturdy keel

my hair a furl of sails in

the dark sky of uncertainty.

A lighthouse is my only lamp

the stars held captive in your hand.

If the sea does not capitulate

red sails cast into a cleft

too wide for me to cross,

I was trying to get to you.

Art from Getty

Nothing has Changed

When dreams pull me under

I call out across the ocean

You meet me at  the shore

and there is nothing to  hold to

but silvery shadows that cross

and uncross in our slumbering sea.

I bend to you  fragile as  sea foam

tossed in wind rifts  released

from unfastened hands. 

This is how I love you

a prisoner of  repetition

like endless waves you come and go.

 

art by Victor Bauer

Like an animal

In the mist of dreams the touch of your skin is tinder igniting a flare becoming a flame. Your eyes seek out the savage in me.  Here we are still lovers  and like starving animals  we devour  each other with weak bites never completely consuming  one another. 

National Geographic

The Gold

Nights while you sleep

 my lips are so close I can

draw your breath in like an

infant at its mother’s breast.

I  run my fingers down the curve

of your spine lean in to breathe

your smokey scent.

I have entered that golden part of you

immersed the sea that claimed me in

oceans of fiery sunsets.

When our hearts grow mute we will know

we have drifted too near the sun

 

art by Karol Bak

 

 

Blasphemy

Browsing  my  journals

I am reminded of the past.

The door  swings open

releasing sleek eels of memories

where I am nothing or at best

a trembling leaf  caught in a spring  breeze.

Do you ever think of me

find  me in constellations pressed against the sky

or hear me in the sigh of  an incoming tide?

I would seek comfort in the moon but I am

so trivial and he is taken by the stars.

In dreams my tongue is a crimson snake that

flicks  hungrily along  the length of your thigh

curling around the catch in my throat.

You are god and have  named me regret.

I close our door with pried fingers.

I’ve given up on prayer hands.

 

 

 

Art by Rita Hardy

If I Am Quiet

I can watch butterflies

float weightless over gardens

Stained glass collages of

amber rust and brown

set in facets of sable veins

they hover over flowers

compound eyes and fluttery feelers

faces smeared flaxen

too fine for the eye to see

Free from all fear

death is not a concept on

their mystical journey

If I am silent I can watch.

art by Nature Works

the life cycle of a rose

On a thorny stalk

wrapped in leafy veins

heavy with the burden

of viscous dew

for the love of light her

corolla lifts upright

a broad faced still life

anchored to the earth

she tracks the sun across

an unpredictable sky

At dusk she combs the air

with sweetness retreating

at twilight into

pearly pools of the moon.

 

photography by heart

We Had Wings

Then, wisdom grew from fruit

and time was a seedling.

All creatures spoke the same,

hymn of bats, breath of horses.

We were winged and freedom

was etched on the soles of our feet.

Pathways in the earth and sky were

known not charted.

We stepped naked into the blazing sun

bared ourselves to golden rivers and

awesome tidal thunder.

Later In the Dark

At the wharf I lean back against the damp stone wall, sip my drink and yield to the slippery salamander of sea. The moon is a glistening slice of melon, her whisper carries on the wind “moon child I love you too”. Sinking deeper in to my subconscious I watch a velvet sea bird swoop my reflection from silver waves where the sighs of lovers are lost in a monsoon. Old images flicker across my frontal lobe as I liberate sip by sip. That man with the golden veins doesn’t interest me anymore. Later when my pearl skinned body breaks the surface I’ll bring him back again.

art by Steve Hanks