Beneath the surface,
gripped by the ripples
of life gone by.
It is a sad softness, and there are cold
lashes of fear, set into the marrow
of my bones.
Take this tender heart, I whisper.
To someone.
Somewhere.
I mourn
the turning of time.
Shall I clutch at the moment,
or the passing days gone by?
Or shall I be free
to stroll the fields, with you?
Free to know the wind
as an ever changing friend.
I hold this fear in soft arms
and let her be.
She is a dear traveller.
She knows this village well.
Peace, dear friend.
We shall sit
and we shall be, without wishing
to change one another.
I close my eyes, my foot on a chair.
Pots clang. Time flashes,
bright and loud.
Could there be just me and the stars?
Me and my hands on dry earth?
My heart glows at the thought.
And I run, and I run from the noise.
And I run and hold tight to the sweet,
sweet moments of quiet on a hill.
Exhaustion is the arrow to peace.
Peace is the home that waits for me
always.
How my soul asks to be held.
How she breathes
the cotton thoughts of yesterday
through the trees
as she remembers.
She holds my hand and walks me home
while rabid dogs do lie,
she takes each ache, and wraps them dear
though fear, old foe, won’t die.
Her seeds of goodness, daily, sprout
she guides my heart by day,
the softest wind, she whispers me,
her sun the warmest ray.
And with this peace, I lay her tune
I sing her through the night,
oh, softness, take, me home again,
sweet angel, golden light.
***
When I believed in angels, a golden one would shine.
And I would see her face in the dark of my mind, always smiling, always soft and sweet and dear.
And she would hold me through this life, the golden one, when I was broken, lost or bruised.
I wish I still believed in angels.
I wish I still believed.
The river is always changed
after the stone
has pierced her
still waters.
When there is,
in this soft heart,
a tear for sweet love departed,
a tender wave of grief upon the shore;
where do these small hands go?
How do I hold
and kiss
and whisper
each precious ache
into wholeness, once more?
There is an apricot sun in the distance.
There is a mighty perfection
twinkling in the eye.
And so it is,
the ache shall be
here
and I shall know her.
Until I have known her eternal home.
Of all the labels I reject
‘a poet’
is the one golden cage
ringing true to my soul.
It holds my heart,
this stamp that tells me-
not who I am,
but what I do in the world
and how these depths consume me.
And though a label
is but a boundary with imaginary walls
in a universe unending,
a poet
I am
in words
and heart.
A poet I am,
I am.
Life and her currents.
I feel them like tears in my bones.
And all I can do is let the river run,
let the stream carry me
wherever I may go.
Through the high clouds of white.
Through the deep dungeons, dark.
I will be there.
Life,
I will be there
to follow the rainbow, home.
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