Category Archives: relationships

Silver bells

And the man said
“Well, it’s time to clear the driveway now.”

And Heart said
“I will go along.”

And the man said
“Let’s grab that big plastic scoop.
It runs like a sleigh, and carries a lot.”

And Hands said
“Don’t knuckle under”

And Knees said
“Don’t buckle under”

And the man said, breathing hard,
“It is good to be out here.
Even with the cold. Even with the work.
It makes me feel, you know, somehow worthy.
It will be good for someone.”

And Coyote said
“Yes.”

And Heart said
“Take a break.”

And Lungs said
“Yes.”

Now Bob (the cat) had been playing
under the Christmas tree,
and was covered in ribbons and bells and needles,
and, before you knew it, had run clean out the back door.

And man, finally having finished, leaned upon his shovel
to survey the smoothness of his work.
And Coyote woo wooed his approval,
and the bells on Bob’s tail rang.

And Brain, well SHE said
“The tea is ready, sweetheart. Bedtime soon. Bob will be back.”

***

Image from Pinterest

a failure of foresight

Don’t kill yourself, (they said),
when he went out to do the walkway
in the dark.
One upstairs, with Netflix on the headphones.
The other snoring in her pillow chair.
Most of the neighbourhood in for the night.
The odd car, trucking bags of groceries
or kids to piano lessons.
So no one found him, behind the boxwood hedge,
until the movie credits rolled
and the sleeper woke with an itchy premonition.

Child of grace

Just this morning, Clarice went to coma. In hallways of cottony grey she swims, but not aimlessly. She has shed the displeasures of the flesh, and does not feel, as they slide the needles and tubes into it and make the lungs rise and fall. Only hears, in a fast fade, the pops and clicks and hisses. She knows there will be no visitors for a time.

So small now, with lightness, this sprite of being.
The singularity awaits, the neutron star that holds the knowing. She can touch it, she senses, but waits for divine invitation. In her life of walking, she has been shown but parts of its great story and, in those moments, her friends and kin have turned away and left her in quietness.

And soon, we know now, Clarice will return, and fill the languishing body with a spirit of soft fire. The quietness will stay in her person, and grace will shine. If you are the one to whom she turns her eyes, beware, for she may ask you to walk for a while.

Apartment for rent

Erica has her own key
to her own apartment,
on the strength of a job letter.
No more nightly pay,
unwanted bottles,
fancy but fouled dresses.
She sits in the arbourite kitchen
with a half jar of instant
and ten cigarettes.
As a spotted pigeon taps the window,
Erica takes stock.
Of unfinished school,
desperate and frustrated parents,
bad associations.
This donkey’s education.
Soured to life, in the age of exuberance.
Phantom Facebook friends.
It’s so silent in here, she thinks,
and walks, perplexed, to the window
with a finger full of peanut butter.
Bird must be hungry,
’cause it pecks like a jackhammer
and hurts her finger.
She draws back in fright.  It flies away in fright.
What now?  She thinks.  Not a soul, not a soul do I have.
An apartment she has.
And an apartness.  A leper’s loneliness, tonight.

 

Maybe

May it be
that I don’t merit
your respect
because I’ve never raised a hand
to you
(’cause they say, you know,
there are some who only understand force)
that I seldom refuse your mundane wants,
your idle and unnecessary requests
that are meant to test the waters
that I am absorbed with two of the three R’s
and do not smile on cue.
and, that I take social sabbaticals too often.

You could be singing that old Bonnie Rait song,
and I am sorry, yes I am,
but I never could read your mind.

Signals

I do receive them still,
though more infrequently
and, I suspect,
from those who love company.
In days of yore,
some did the brazen dance of plumage,
seeking only to stir up mischief,
I think.
To think otherwise would be self serving,
do you know?
Though once, the bedside phone rang at 2 a.m.
and an invitation was extended and rejected.
I am an upstanding citizen,
do you know?

Sense you all

You won’t have to tell me
how to touch.
Where to begin.
What emboldens,
or brings wild abandon.

With ease do i see your gilded cage
and its fearsome keeper.

And, we know why rules were made,
don’t we?

Your measured steps tell of fear,
not of love.

I have a fear too,
but of a different kind.

Your ceaseless radiation
is my courage.

Together, we’ll be dangerous.