December, shyly

December 9, 2012

December, shyly

The evening clouds,

gray and heavy-hanging, begin,

slowly, to shiver down

in white, disparate pieces:

sleepy; star-tangled.

The sky drifts down towards earth,

dry as dust, dry as bones,

but time drifts across the ground,

through the empty, wind-limbed streets

of the city, settling.

The shadow of our night bus merges

and emerges, steadily passing through

the faint yellow pools of light

held, suspended, by the streetlamps. 

Somewhere in the distance, the bus driver

chats strangely with no one in particular. 

The light snow whispers to itself as it falls.

The blackbirds call to one another,

if only to hear their own voices shudder
through the quiet air.

indian-ocean blue

November 17, 2010

indian-ocean blue

i remember one time when we

walked through that abandoned

apple orchard, hand in hand.  it must

have been late summer or early fall

because there were still blossoms

on the branches, pink and soft

as the birdsong and your newspaper poetry. 

we came upon the apples, cold and

hard and bright – peridot; it didn’t matter

that they still had weeks to ripen, because

our rosebud mouths opened, ate them,

and laughed.  we thought

that the clouds gathering were only doves

coming to nest in the sky until it began

to thunder, but even then our eyes

like sunflowers turned to search

for some remaining trace of light

as we held each other close. 

yesterday, we didn’t walk through

apple trees, but through city streets,

and you whispered that you missed

the songbirds because they had all become

pigeons.  our sad talk is of statistics,

not of verse, and our voices fight the steel

and concrete clanging.  construction scaffolds

and littered cigarettes are all we know

of beauty. other people pass on the sidewalk,

keeping their faces down, rushing

off to their challenging jobs and busy

lives.  the rain streaks down our dirty

gray windows, and yet we pull

out those old, perennial smiles and think

about the days when the sky was still

that indian-ocean blue;

we remember, we hope,

and we hold each other close.

love

July 1, 2010

love

one day we sat and watched a patient parade full of people with nowhere to go.  you waved a flag and those thoroughbred thoughts you were always so proud of and said, these are the kind of people who never leave this place.

the only reason i knew there was loathing hidden behind your eyes is because i had already learned how to read your voice. 

you leaned back to watch your dreams tessellate into such lovely patterns in the air: i’m not going to be like that.  your eyes drifted and decided to focus on the sky, and then you were watching the clouds as if scrying for the future. 

i wondered what you saw up there, but i was too afraid to ask.

i could never handle bad news. 

amidst all the others with rigid, black-tie-formal faces, your two eyes were like matchboxes and your smile was like the fire: beautiful and rogue and dangerous only to those who came too close to putting it out. 

i tried a vanishing act, but you laughed at me because, as usual, it didn’t work. 

i want this to last forever, you lied. 

there was never actually a place for me in your starry sky, anyway; i suppose i would have held you back, like gravity. 

goodbye, you said.

“goodbye,” i said.

the parade was still passing as you left. 

with a sad smile, i watched you fade away, watched what was left of the people who kept walking and walking but had nowhere to go, and tried in vain to differentiate myself from the rest of that faceless crowd.