Wayfarer

Once it was a #mountain, imperious and fine. Since topped and humbled by rivers, wind, and time. Then it was a boulder solid, stubborn, dense tumbled by a glacier & brought, reduced, hence. Now it is a sitting-stone: here I perch and play. And we dream together of how every peak decays. #vss365

Years ago I told him we'd planted a #cloud seed. It sprouted there in the blue, first a fish then a dragon. It vanished soon after he'd named it. I pronounced it too big for that sky. He's worn his name for years, and soon I fear he will not wonder at the nature of clouds. #vss365

Perhaps we will rest peaceful, wreathed in the smoke of the burning Amazon, pillowed by drone-struck rubble or laved by a wave that used to be an iceberg. Or perhaps our children their #bequest less than nothing will take their cut early. Has an easy sleep ever been a just one? #vss365

Streetlights beat as I take my #reprieve from chirping monitors and pain-wracked dreams. Guilt rides hollow-eyed in your seat, not for your hand, empty and unheld but for the peace so far away from your side. Tonight, in borrowed beds we claim what healing we can. #vss365

Each scratch, each wound weeps as I slip beneath, whimpers building to a drowning bellow as I #purify myself. When I emerge, still raw and burning I will wear the pain for armor. #vss365

Terrified by the vasty unknowns of liberty, Shrinking from the maze of choice and agency Chary of promises of health and prosperity Is it any wonder they did not #renounce the enduring solidity of the boot upon their necks? #vss365

Doers and deciders gripped by indecision declared Earth a loss and put her down one Sunday in fire and thunder. From hermetic boardrooms over sweeping vistas they promise our ghosts they'll #nurture what sprouts from the grey ash that blankets our beds. #vss365

only a name, then a chill note rings in this summer heart as warm and living above #reckon the cold dead below a beginning, an end an epitaph #vss365

Too vast to comprehend #hunger and too unfeeling not that it would starve, as we pace the halls of its temples seeking our own corner office and feed it our lives one meeting at a time. #vss365

The flame renews itself even as it consumes: tangled, #passion spent and drowsy we reach crumpled sheets sighing and as fingers touch they twine greedy for what burned between us moments ago. #vss365

A thrill it was to #embark by air! They'd line the windows, backlit shadows to see us ascend the boarding stair. Now, we part ahead of time. One "keep in touch" and off they rush-- we watch and shuffle through the line. #vss365

If you find me on a clear day, perfect weather, scribbling furiously, sipping cocoa, cocooned head to toe in a favorite throw know that while the sun shines without within, windows rattle in a sudden #stormy squall, such as you'd only read about in a crumpled wad of paper at my feet. #vss365

The trees are all undressed for the harvest, green and hale while birds laze heedless of their appointed itinerary. As if summer, grown fond of warm naps and dewy tumblers, has penciled a #conflict into the reservation book. And autumn waits for some tardy gust to sweep her room ready. #vss365

It surprised even you, we think, your four legs perambulating in unison each pounce defiant of gravity and good sense. Now, as we gather you for your longest leap not even a whisker stirs: we #marvel that you so heavy in our hands ever moved at all. #vss365

We rode in armor to #explore: our bathyspheres and starships proof against the elements and stranger things. Behind, lay lies curling in our wake, growing, eclipsing our nobler pursuits. If we pushed ever faster, ever onward, ever higher-- it was because we could never return home again. #vss365

I could have joined a nobler tribe to #sustain myself on starlight and vibes. But, alas, my appetites ran to wine and food, and skin (and the warm places enfolded within). Sated and sleepy here I wait-- too heavy to ascend, too solid to evaporate. #vss365

Anticipation binds us: the cat crying for dinner to #commence; the cracked riverbed awaiting summer rain. A moment fulfilled complete unbroken. Then empty we begin again. #vss365

Summer forgot herself last evening, breathed a chill that whispered of an #autumnal guest gracefully descending as upon a grand stair. She rains today, thundering vicious, uncloaking the sun only to boil us-- but in her own time, a visitor herself, she too will depart. #vss365

Perhaps these words are from the heart: Sometimes warm and bright. Or salty and stinging. Anemic and swift some days Rich and sluggish on others. Phlegmatic or #sanguine, When they stop flowing, you'll know me for dead. #vss365

An exclusive club: initiation in decades, every penny and many drops of blood. Hands wear promises unspeakable to others, renewed in private in secret cants. Behind closed doors ways bend #esoteric robes find slippers in hidden feng shui. In two, we find one. 'Til death do us part. #vss365

A tardy secret, then: the night before, I go apart beneath the sky fold my notes and speak, full-throated, #eloquent or no to the billion stars. That gets me to the podium, for any other audience, hall or stadium, is but a rounding error. For the terror, I take pills. #vss365

A cataract echoes in caverns of sleep: in #naïveté I watch and dredge the #melange for a face I might know. Ravenous watching, dark as guilt broad as regret it answers. Upset, I vanish below. Might dread pry me free of that black undertow? Yet it waits even now for my eyes to close. #vss365

We speak softly of the #intuition that leads the queasy cat to carpet; the gravity what undoes the slender balance of refrigerated leftovers. Scouring, scowling, scrubbing, the screens fade-- distance and perspective return. We speak softly-- our hands wear the secret. #vss365

You will not look back, all your eyes could hold still too small, too humble for your ambition. Go then, however far, to lay beside your destiny where some lambent #moonglade might reflect instead your wonder rekindled. #vss365

Scalded and scrubbed, I drift to my bed, Limp as the pillow that cradles my head. Plan not to dream. Pray not to think. A raw #palimpsest for Tomorrow to ink. #vss365

One of the quiet bright moments of lockdown was Sam Neill serenading us on the ukulele. This type of tenderness feels rare nowadays, how lucky we were. Thank you for everything. ❤️❤️❤️

The salt breeze stirs my heart to swim with you naked, unafraid and #unabashed while my voice drowns syllables deep no courage to give it breath. #vss365

Let's call it #magnetism-- for our inexplicable, constant attraction and our contrasts that bind. We will name it gravity when our orbits decay leaving us only a long bitter fall. #vss365

Our #embrace was a geologic age. I sought your heat in the ocean depths; you clawed furrows in the earth like glaciers retreating as we quickened and trembled. They will wonder at our story worn in the stones of this place, never to read a single word. #vss365

Was it still a #rose escaping petal by petal twixt your fingers? Was its fragrance sweet when it lay on the earth drowned in summer storms? Did the worms know its color turning it beneath winter drifts? Spring again, would you name this green bud a promise or just another rose? #vss365

#Supercilious and become shadow beacon smoldering city crumbling on its hill eternal tonight we too pause and gaze upward seeking light. #vss365

Sky gazes blue and wide and pitiless. Late blooms droop #florid and trembling Quail burrow in their shade forsaking free air. Mirages dance the blacktop: slake your thirst with pain. We do not pray; no spell could cloud this stainless heaven. #vss365

A whiff of #carrion as we descend into the subway, reminder of an appointment that one day we will keep. #vss365

Sun hides, and thunder speaks to #disgruntle me. Petrichor parts the curtains and I drop the sashes, every one. Doves scramble, grateful for the rain as I wring my hands and watch the ceiling for spots. #vss365

We see them moving and shaking. We see neighbors stumble, strangers fall. They know we see, hope we learn fear, look away. We know this, too: the trapeze of the #flea circus swings, and the high wire trembles, but one hand nudges the table the other pockets the fee. #vss365

When the time came, the #villain did not wield a sword or gun or spaceship. He wore fine cloth, armed only with empty words and invisible numbers that brought law and sense to heel. We could've crushed an army. We were powerless against lies. #vss365

The hourglass was broken, irrevocably, I know, but could you blame me for gathering each #grain splinters studding my palm hours wasted to maybe recover all the moments we'd never measure? #vss365

Habit takes the wheel, demanding I turn, its #pull more urgent than any street sign. Our ghosts transfix me, watching from the balcony in the lightning of a phantom storm. Your name touches my lips sure as a key finds its lock. When the thunder rolls, I am gone. #vss365

He has found a snake or maybe his tail, his impatient wiggle betraying the #lurch and the tumble after. Too slow, too clumsy-- his foe slips behind him to surprise him again, soon, like a sudden sunbeam from a young sun. #vss365

We live in grim times, I reasoned, and if the other guy the bad guy not to mince words had thrown ethics, morals, deodorant out the window then why shoulder the burden alone? I hadn't counted on how difficult it might be to #defenestrate my better, very much winged, angels. #vss365

It never used to be difficult: collect ingredients, combine, drop. Bake. But there's time to reflect as the #batch cooks, on the dust on the bowls, and forgetting the scent of warm vanilla. Where have my hands been, all this time? #vss365

Busy your hands and #putter (say it's rebellion against entropy), the plink of each grain you shift aimless noise to hush the clangor hammer on anvil of each heartbeat chipping your life away. #vss365

Sleep and wake, put in your time behind a desk or on a line. Dream you'll make it big one day, give your notice, sail away-- but you wake, and rise, and fall 'till someday you don't rise at all. Maybe you'll #undo that chain, but will the shackle still remain? #vss365

Above, above: loose in the hand that would #clench it firm each snore revealing half-concealed metal splitting sunbeams. Ready to fall. Below, below: tails twitching, eyes alert, furred haunches tense, awaiting the clatter that will announce the scramble. Ready to pounce, and conceal. #vss365

She is a gatherer, face like moonrise above her screen bright in borrowed light. Eyes spear a passerby. Nails lift the texture of the table's edge depositing it in clicks and jabs on unseen keys. She meets my gaze. She looks at me, then through me, and now her #novel holds me as well. #vss365

A simple potion: parched fruit of a foreign shore reduced to powder, then steeped in aqua scalding hot. Drink it down, bitter like the words you spoke to the mirror, praying it proves sovereign against the piping of the #fiend that bids your eyelids shut. #vss365

The #gift burned my fingers and I let it fall. "It belongs to everyone now," said the stranger. The blaze raged, left the forest bare, but our hearths were never again empty. #vss365

I turned, too #distant to see the color of your eyes but in that space I saw it all: You, yes; but also your shadow on the surf racing to kiss the islands we never visited. Beyond, the sea, the horizon, and the sunset. Could I have loved you so completely before our book was closed? #vss365

Missed your message, your #quietus my chaos static behind your eyes. Phone rang me deaf with sympathy, shared sorrow fading in time to silence. Then sang, between us, a tone, pure and insistent: our connection unmade. #vss365