Where I Go

I saw its shadow before the moth.  And I knew that when he arrived it would only end in a dark.  The dark that burns everything out.  The dark that completes the night.
I went to my place.  The place that wanted me to find it so long ago.  The place that called me to it the first time my heart broke.
It is a stand of very old trees.  When I walk underneath them, I feel something come down from their canopy to drape me.  Cover me up like a broken caterpillar's silks.  I feel the change come when I am under the mingling leaves.  A shower that shifts my pain into a new skin.  A glass skin.  I sit under the trees, I talk to the trees.  I tell them of my heartache and confusion.  I feel their rough bark, I feel their vibration.  They are tuned in to me.  They hold me in ways people cannot. 
The more times I go there, the more transparent the glass scars become.  I let people see them sooner despite knowing that the more they see, the sooner they will leave.  I say too much because I fear I won't get to tell my whole story.  I stay too long because loss is far too familiar with me to let me keep a friend.  I want days back, to change the path.  I want days back, to choose more smiles.  I want days back, to show more of me that is good.  I try to tell the truths I know.  The sadder truth is that no one listens.  No one knows the way I know.  When I think that they do, when I think that they match, I end up being wrong, so wrong.  Tricked and alone forever, except when I'm under my trees.   The only ones strong enough to hold me.  The only ones still enough to calm me.  The only ones full enough to listen.  I sit with them and they with me.  They give me signs when I ask about love and friendship.  Two doves I didn't see before, fly from high branches, and in their wake, a feather spins down, twirling like a maple seed, to land only for me.  I pick it up and look at it.  It is small and perfect.  I take it with me when I leave the trees.  Two birds, one feather.  When I came across the meaning of a dove's feather falling from the sky, it read love, gentleness and kindness gifted from heaven.  This made me smile to my deepest self.  To know that I have this in my life.  I try to realize it when I find it, but sometimes I think that love must wear a very heavy cloak.  Only unveiling itself in the very beginning when it's too soon or in the very end when it's too late.  The trees give me back to myself.
A dusty moth in the shadows of morning, a broken butterfly on my bedroom window in the mid-day sun, a hidden owl in the dark of night.  All right there to see, to watch, yet so difficult to catch when they are in flight.  I think that everyone just longs for another to truly see them.  I wish for a friend to know the trees with me. 

A friend told me about something that was.

So I went to find it.

and it was.



when others go away

Alone with my thoughts right now.  Sometimes they are cruel to me.  They make me long for memories with new people I will never know.

The Recording

 

 

The stars went round in circles tonight,

trying to grasp one an other's hands,

forgetting their distances.

They made a movie in the sky for me.

A silent.

I watched and waited for the music to fill in the pauses.

It did, silently,

from my memories of twenty years ago.

When I pretended to be a starlet.

And you the hero I hadn't met until yesterday.

You, the face, all fuzzy in my thoughts, coming in clear now.

Close now.

Not smeared, like the lights in the sky.

My lens caught you and kept you for me

to watch whenever I want.

Despite our distances.

 

 



The Nightbird

The Nightbird

 

 

The sounds he creeks out,

I wonder if they are out of fear or love.

repeat

repeat

repeat

three times for her

three times for instinct

three times for me.

He didn't know it was for me too.

But I was listening

when others were not looking.

I was making his beauty into a memory of mine.

He is silent now,

but here is where I keep his song.

Until the morning,

when the dew washes away thirst.



Picture

It's sad up in there.
In those eyes that I saw
for a little while.
What comes out of them when you're alone?
Yours are different from eachother,
just like mine.
Uneven.
But each, separately, carries the same beauty.
I wonder why that is.
I wonder how that can be.
The two sides of you could not match.
You question yourself,
just like me.
Such sad beauty.
I wonder if you know that it is there for us to see.

Poison Ivy

Spined up itching
annual feast
hidden, then snare
watery eyes crazed
sleeplessness
unfolding
annointed with evil oils
pretty edging for pulling
smile despite
the red