beside the River

Remember the cabin among the trees hidden like rabbits resting in nests of autumn leaves?  By the window that looks out on the river there is a writer’s desk  with printing ink and fresh flowers on the sill,  froths of tenderness kissed by the sun.
Can you recall the  warm days we shared  among redwoods that spoke to us?  The memory evokes such nostalgia for that ache, fierce with crushing devotion. I left a heart shaped basket of seeds in the arch of a tree for the birds to scatter.  I will always  remember you and the cabin by the river,  the sultry nights I would dance for you,    sheer layers floating  to the herringbone floor.

The Sad Cafe

Autumn leaves have begun to fall.
Late October London is ablaze in hues of orange and purple.
On my bench by the river I daydream that I am an adolescent
reptile escaped from Kafka’s Die Verwanlung, laid back basking in the sun.

The air is layered in heavy cologne but men do not  interest me now.  I am content to casually observe.  To my advantage I know all about them while they know so little about me.  Thinking of you against my wishes, dying a little,  dead all the sweet hope of dreams never realized,  I imagine my earthly body padded, sat beside yours on a grassy knoll
breathing  the scent of lilac and the mossy green River Delta.

In the dark I am nude but for a shadow across my torso.
You are so near and to distract my self from this burning desire
I let my thoughts linger among the lines of Roethke’s “In A Dark Time”.

Years pass and by chance we meet at the sad cafe. I sway in your arms like a fragile birch in an autumn tempest. The halo of my eyes glisten recalling how we gave away what we never really had. We hold each other knowing that love has died and we with it.

 

art by Fabian Perez

 

From the train window I can see miles of Pines, they seem to go on forever. There’s a golden wolf howling at the moon, chanting to the midnight Gods. By morning that will give way to Palm trees and screeching Cicadas. Tonight the stars reveal the belly of the world  from which we all come.   What I have left is a photograph. Tell me night-time dreamer, why you hold so many secrets in your heart. When I look into your  eyes
all I  see is star dust.

Cherry Blossoms

A mass of  tangled limbs we cling to each other. I  hold tight to baby sister as we toss about the dank floor of the vessel, its  boards pelted by  the spray of  high swells. Her   sweet  scent distinguishes  her  from the others, she has the smell of a blossoms freshly picked. .   Just yesterday we were  lingering along the dirt road that leads from the old school house to our   home of splintered walls and concrete floors ignoring by instinct the slant eyes of  men driving an old van closer and closer.  Our school books scattered on the path, muffled cries drowned under rumbling motors.   Miles from home we are fed La Rochas to  soothe us into sweet fevered dreams.   Waking  in a perfumed  world of pale pink sarongs and  silk fans.  The slits of a man’s eyes behind angry walls.

copyright H. Rene Hunter

 

Annie Says “it’s alright”

Here on the balcony I let the cool  air and a majestic linden tree with its dark leaved  branches  reach out to soothe  me but the night conjures memories from the past that I try to blow away in the smoke of my cigarette.   In the back of my mind I recall a girl, a fragility in leather.    Did  she  exist or is she a  construct of my brain?   I try  to drown out my thoughts with some blues.  I am going somewhere I really don’t want to go and tonight I am breathing just for the light.