My alien comes
in soft moments of quiet-
a prescience on bug feet,
and, all at once,
I am fleshed in the realness of an eye.
All at once
fated dramas are seen
as certain and irreversible,
writ on stone tablets.
And then we sleep,
perchance to dream…
***
Give me the undercurrents
and not the shiny shallows.
The math of founding harmonies,
dark forests in their hallows.
***
Daguerreotype is the day,
ancient as I drive.
Beside me she is a ghost,
and I can’t speak to the veil-
the closed idiom of her soul.
Or
I am the ghost
and have simply lost the language
to this often-paved way.
***
They got into the car just the same, even though this was a frivolous trip. Even though she knew his silences sometimes lasted the whole way. Today, though, was a study in differentness. It was his averted eyes, his apparent focus on an imagined point just a few feet away or in the upside-down.
She moves to make small talk but it catches in her throat, knowing that it usually elicits impatience and forced responses, and fearing what it might bring today.
“Why did I make him go? What is wrong?”, she thinks. “I can’t stay quiet. I’m just not that person. No. Not alone, with only my own thoughts.”
They cruise, and he disinfects his hands at alternate stop signs. She pats his knee, leaves her hand there. A hundred, a thousand times this road has known them and been peppered with their tire treads.
“Nick, let’s go home, okay?”…in a voice more coquettish than pleading.
But he drives on, comes to the traffic lights which flash alarmingly as if cautioning against any further advance.
“What’s the way, Beth?”
“Nick, what’s wrong? You know the way.”
“Beth, I can’t. I’m sorry. You need to show me.”
And she cries.
As we spoke
a wing, long broken,
fell off inside of me,
unnoticed as a leaf.
I stepped out of sheep’s clothing
and flaunted a love.
And my arms,
oh my arms
swelled in strength
to have
and to hold.
***
One house had hooks
and stairs.
Sharp corners and forest.
This house is smooth,
considerate,
and many-plugged.
Cats, exploring,
find concrete caves
down a flight.
Loud laundry in the kitchen,
window-lofted light.
***
“FOR THE LOST”
In fog’s night,
there’s a shimmer.
A hint of hearth and home.
A muted invitation
to one who walks alone.
Far away from native shore
and succor of the soul.
Harbouring a longing for
the things that make us whole.
Fishing for remembrances
of paintings in the mind,
but finding only semblances
in images unkind.
And now they come, in elder times,
these showings of a land.
So often gleaned from ancient rhymes
that lead us by the hand.
As if to say this life of yours
is wanting for its bed,
so be untroubled, free of chores,
and rest your weary head.
A walk, shortened,
in October bluster.
Black branches flailing
shake off leaves to the bonfire of fall.
Escape, they do, in a tumble dry dance.
Carpet the catwalks.
Stick to the shoes.
The future’s opaque.
Carrying, carrying things.
Stumbling towards rest.
Knuckles of anxiousness
push up, under the jawline.
Boxes,
unopened these years.
A pair of neglected sneakers,
remembrance of running,
regret now
they didn’t die a natural death.
This material mountain,
trove of trivialities,
hobbling our limp
to tomorrow.
***
A troubling fall
Undone esteem
A mother’s pall
informs the dream.
***
Being too-long hesitant
to mount the steps
makes one grow slipper-bound,
complacent in regret’s denial.
Greenish in hue
from watching the passers-by take to flight.
***
~It wasn’t like you see in the movies, with large looming ships and lizard people, or elusive saucers seen in the corners of your eye. They were here all the time. Growing in sacred shade. Pressed beneath chosen boulders. Outliers in walks of life. Watching, until now.~
***
Image: https://pixabay.com/users/victoria_borodinova-6314823/
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