Monthly Archives: January 2017

I’ve dreamed of you…

At first, the joy of freedom; and then

the sorrow for the grief you brought segued into

a smile, a nod, a shake of your head

to speak much more than words allow.

Always silent, yet I understood your conflict,

the push and the pull of wanting

to be here and there all at once.

*

Time, that human construct, is nothing.

A way to measure the span between

then and now; between

you breathing your first and

sighing your last; the span that

doesn’t measure in tears but in

click-ticks on a numbered face that become

hours in a day and days in a week,

weeks in months and years; in decades and centuries.

The sun’s path across the sky, chased

by Mother moon.

*

I dreamed of you…

They brought you to me, not your infant self

swaddled and seeking points of reference in your new world; but

fully grown, the man you were when you left.

You smiled at me. I wept my joy and

you held out your arms. You held me against your great chest,

in those strong arms heavy on my shoulders. My ear

pressed and listening for the heartbeat

once a whooshing jump-rope sound; once

a steady thump to reassure me through

the darkest of the dark.

There was only your weight,

your solidity, your smile. My trembling joy.

“Can you stay?” I asked. “Will they let you?”

“Yes, I think so.” But you shook your head, your smile saddened.

You stepped away, back into my brain wishing or the conduit

breaking; the connection unexplained, undiscovered

except in dreaming. The first contact in the span

measured only in tears.

TLD

Where are you now? Drifting through

another realm, a plane more suited

to who you are? Truly are, and not who you

were forced to be. The entity of thought,

of indefatigable brilliance. The one

whose darkness mingled and melded inside, yet

never dimmed the light.

*

Were you here at all? I see

your bows displayed on the wall,

the roof you built, covered in snow; I listen

to you sing inside my head, your song leaping synapses,

pulsing in my blood. The blood we shared

for a little while.

I put your boxing gloves on this morning,

to feel where your hands had been, knowing

the sweat still seeped inside. And then

I put them away, in the armoire storing

the blanket that still smells faintly of happier days.

*

Your influence is everywhere, still

helping those you loved, and those who

you never knew, but owe you a debt; because

they’re pain-free, they understand what was

formerly incomprehensible, they know how to soothe

the demons inside. Those demons you never could

vanquish completely. But you taught them.

You showed them how.

*

Sorrow grips me, this cold January day.

I pry its fingers loose, one at a time;

Peel them back like orange skin that leaves

bitter pith behind, the sweetness

still another layer deep.

It cannot swallow me whole.

I must allow its place, its space or

have it implode and hollow me of words, my joy

my solace, and sanity. Sanctity. Sanctuary.

TLD

(Thoughts this morning led this to that. I am in a contemplative mood, nothing more. I don’t want anyone reading this to fear for me. Once again, I thought about keeping this private, for exactly that reason, but I made a promise and I aim to keep it, so this stays public. That alone should put you at ease.)

When you find hair in the drain, whether

black, white or blue, you’ll wonder if it could be;

I tell you now, that will be me.

Bite at the inside of your cheek and feel

a tap on your hand, “Stop that,”

you’ll hear. That will be me.

Whenever you feel the urge to cut your hair

and hear a voice inside your head, “Let it grow,”

it wheedles. That will be me.

And when you see a turtle, or a camel,

in fact or in illustration, you will add a heart to it

and again, that will be me.

When words froth at your brain and you feel

the need to catch them,

by heart or by hand;

When you see a dragonfly and call it fairy, a baby dragon

in an anole; when a beam of sunlight becomes a path to another world,

That will be me.

When friends drop by and you need to feed them, when baby monkeys

make you cry; when you smell onions sauteing in olive oil, and fear choking on pudding.

Me, me, they are all me.

Such ties don’t break when life does.

They simply change shape and form.

It won’t matter if whatever is left of me once life has spit me out

is riding the ether of some astral plain, Or

simply the echo of what once was, what I was.

It will be me, like it is him.

I hear him whistle;

and sing. All the time

I see him smile;

and shake his head.

I feel his joy, and his despair that

share time in his space, even now.

Spirit or memory, there is no cognitive difference when

love is at the core. Love,

and need; love and

the hubris to believe there is

more to existence than life.

~TLD