Song

I realize what you are to me. You are my song, my poem.

Now most of us don't live our song, but everyone has one. And you are the spirit of my song, its heart, its mind, its music, its words.

And you know the best part? You don't even have to live in this song with me, for all of this to be true.

In the gentle breeze, the sound of the waves from across our beach barely reaches us as we lay propped up against the great big tree at the corner of the meadow in the back of our house. My back against the tree, your back against my chest, I hold you in my arms as you sleep. The impossibly tall-stemmed flowers that have overrun our meadow surround us like so many sentries warding off reality. It is twilight and the sky is suffused with brilliant colors from the setting sun.  I reach to caress your raven hair back from your face, and whisper "Happy Birthday, my love."

Shards

See me dancing in the rain
Shards of glass in my back
Trails of blood, my love

See me drinking whiskey on the porch   
Dreams of diamonds and rust
Don't fall for me, my love.

See me laying in our hammock
Arms holding you in the wrong way
It's all far too late, my love

Words on a page (2)

In the space
between my words
you live, and
we love, you and I

I leap ahead
from words to words
lover mine
you fall behind

Sometimes, I go back
to words from long ago
and find you there,
dreaming

Words on a page

In the rain, there is a whisper
of a moon rising high
and miles and miles of love
washed away with the tide

In my dreams, there is a quickening
of the blood in my veins
a thousand cuts from sharp desires
bleeding words on a page

I didn't hear you leave

You were right, of course

It is 3 in the morning and the world is empty but for the stars above. After a long night of caressing each other's bodies and minds with our words, we just lay there, spent and entwined on our hammock.

"Do you remember the time when...?" I say, reaching out to caress your hair off your face.

You stir on my body and tilt your face up to look into my eyes. "What time?"

I play with your hair, holding your gaze, willing the hammock to continue rocking us gently in the warm breeze off the water.

"The time, all those years ago, when I asked you to marry me and move in to my house?"

You embrace me tightly and whisper, "I loved that house with the crescent moon bay."

Your head back on my chest, we listen to the periodic murmur of the gentle waves.

"Do you remember your response?", I insist gently.

You don't answer.

"You said that if you moved in with me, it would be the beginning of the end of our relationship."

You look up at me but don't say anything.

"You were right, of course."

two simple thoughts

If I talk real softly
will you hear me
but not wake up
so that I can suffuse
your dreams with
my love, my love

If I tell you again
that you are the light
that brightens my mind
will you shine even more
and erase all the darkness
in me, my love

I don't know how

     I don't know how, but I still love you. Will you come to me?

     There is magic in your eyes. The diffuse glow of the setting sun lights up the warmth in your eyes as you smile. I pull you into my arms and onto the hammock on our beach. Our bodies entwined, I talk to you for hours in these summer evenings. In this world of make believe, I tell you that I love you in hundreds of different ways. Words of love, words of fantasy, words of feelings wrapped up in impossible dreams, words of wishes written with layers of untold meaning. I kiss your eyes and tell you that I lust for you. I tell you things. I ask you things to explore the innermost recesses of your mind through your answers. Even when you are in my arms, I long for your mind. In the background I play the saddest romantic songs I can find to quench this undying thirst for you, but they don't work.  So I explore your body with words trying to get to the essence of you. The more I seek, the more I find. I drink from the feeling of you wrapped inside of me. I cannot get enough. So in these summer evenings I hold you in my arms and talk to you.

      I don't know how, but I am still addicted to your mind. Will you come to me?

Infinite absence

The sun sets quickly and brilliantly at this time of year and I had come out of the house to stand on the beach to watch the dying sun light up the water in fiery reds and purples. In the clear air of the late evening I can see for what seems like miles in both directions and there is no one else on the unending sand. The occasional shrill cry of a lone bird in the far distance behind me is the only disturbance to the otherwise meditative periodic rhythm of the waves lapping at the sand all along the shoreline.

Standing at the water's edge with my feet just at the point where the waves give up and recede, I get lost in the sounds and in watching the brilliant colors of the sun on the water slowly dull into a more uniform twilight.

In time, I lay down on my back on the beach and wait for the stars to herald the coming of the night.

Your absence surrounds me, an infinite absence stretching all along the water's edge. It suffuses my thoughts as an only friend. What trick of mind is it that conjures up an absence?  How strange to be besotted with an illusion I have created myself.

I have looked back in time, I have looked far into the future, and found no evidence of you. Yet your absence is in my present, always. What form of insanity this is, I cannot tell.

Can one know something solely from its absence?

At nightfall, the stars come out to shine on me.