Rock Lake

I saw Rock Lake today
It was covered with ice

I saw the island we touched on
It was covered with snow

Where did that summer go?
And all the ones since?

Excavator

I am an excavator of memories
Transforming them into words
To fill blank pages 

Writing

I like writing 
In dimly lit bars
Alone
To cleanse my soul
When it is raining
When the words come
In coffee shops with good hot coffee
In places of mystery and inspiration
In places of silence and solitude
When I am deep inside myself
When the sun comes out
Sitting by water
Making poetic memories
When I am at peace
I like writing 

Time

 

I believe
I am beginning

To grasp

What happened between us

Or 

What didn't happen

In the end 
Are the two not the same?

 

Dislocation

“There is a moment before impact that is the last instant of things as they are. Then the visible
 world explodes.”  
~ Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo

Thin lines
Entwined together 
A rope of life
Over and over 
Thicker and thicker
Layer upon layer 
Of familiarity 
Of knowing
Of being comfortable together
Sedimentary rock formations 
Formed together 
Over time
Over space
Naturally
Without thinking life merges and forms
Within the seconds of normalcy
In a moment 
It all dislocates
An emotional explosion
Rips and shreds the rope
Crumbles and shakes the rock
Nothing intact 
Nothing protected 
Debris strewn over the landscape of an existence
What would of been tomorrow
Ceases today
In the space between then and now

 

Blue

She danced 
In a short blue dress
Legs as long as the palm trees 
Swaying 
In the warm breeze
While her auburn hair 
Shimmered
In the moonlight 

Hemingway and Atwood

 "He had been successful in almost every way except in his married life, although he had never cared, truly, about success. What he cared about was painting and his children and he was still in love the first woman he had been in love with. He had loved many women since and sometimes someone would come to stay on the island. He needed to see women and they were welcome for a while. He liked having them there, sometimes for quite a long time. But in the end he was always glad when they were gone, even when he was very fond of them. He had trained himself not to quarrel with women anymore and he had learned how not to get married."
~ Ernest Hemingway, Islands In The Stream

"So much for endings. Beginnings are always more fun. True connoisseurs, however, are known to favor the stretch in between, since it’s the hardest to do anything with. That’s about all that can be said for plots, which anyway are just one thing after another, a what and a what and a what."
~ Margaret Atwood

Kay

Wherever I go
Wherever I have gone 
Wherever I will go
I will
Carry you with me...

 

Racing In The Street

Words so haunting
So universal 
Words interchangeable  
With the vagary of existence 

Experiences
 
So long ago
So far away
Where has everything gone
That was and is and is not anymore


"Fundamentally we're repairmen. Everybody's broken. Everybody's broken somewhere. You can't get through life without it. You've paid your artists and your film makers and your poets and your novelists to be basically your handyman or your repairmen. And we're willing to go into the garage, where all the junk is lying around, and we start to tinker away. When you contextualize and make small sense of those things, they start to repair those little pieces of you."
- Bruce Springsteen, HBO Documentary High Hopes

After

Is God speaking?
Whispering the answers

  (for resurrection)
   (for restoration)

Only after
The questions are no longer asked?

After time
After pain
After storms
After vertigo
After silence
After tears 
After darkness
After confusion
After undiluted slog
After liminal space
After being ship wrecked and broken

After it all
Now 
The rainbow of release