both sides of a journey

I watched the River through your eyes,

Counted clouds in ripples and curls,

And the gentle face of the ageless flow

Gurgles like the voice of a friend.

Like any winter day

the barges move coal, the bridge

touches both sides of a journey, but today

the waters reach out in supple fingers, as if

to calm the restless heart 

that carries longing in each step.

Breath is satisfying and whispers

puff into vapors; they cloud the eyes

for only the moment allowed,

to see a reflection…of love.

a short menu...

time paints in vivid strokes
as if a canvas, memory accepts
the colors of given days and blends
like the bend of sun and world's end
where only our idea of God can accept
the gift of the petal's edge

Memory shreds the ordered flow
into places we wish to go, and things we would;
and should is a passport to the space between
the sides of the page, burrow like leaf miners
raise the surface till it breaks, obliterates the fates
that have fallen once.

It is the comings and goings that do not lie;
nor morph into more pleasing substance-
alive or not, in the end...it is a short menu
for such a learned palate, and such eclectic tastes...

in my heart ...

You live in my heart, a place of thought

Wherein I cannot deny things

I accept as truths

It is resistant to the gravity of logic and convention;

It has the magic of wishes, and the powers

of divine creation.

I was... before I was born, and to that place

from which I came, I shall truly return,

And You

Will be there with me, matched

in the vault of my treasures, among

the gems and jewels of my existence.

You

who loved me on your splendid nipple

You who lifted me from fragile youth,

and You who loved me through this body

as if it were my eternal soul

All of You

The bricks and mortar

of the house my spirit calls home

the firmament on which I stand

When there is nothing of the world,

and nothing made of matter; there will be

All of You, and the me...All of You have made.

Miles and miles

The blank sheet, tabula raza, mind fall-
is a sponge of life in this moment,
when every wisp of wind sweeps like a tide,
the flicker of a fly's wings, a fascination,
and the jazz man's horn
forms a cornucopia of vivid dreamlets;
streamlets flown in the spring's thaw of spirit,
joined to gurgling streams, mist-cloud cascades.

The world on a string of pungent thought
a thought of the woman and last night
the woman I wanted and never saw again
again the dream of a moment I would remake
the mistake that teaches the ache
of an unforgiven silence

and floating away to dream again
to re-arm for the assault of day
the challenge to be no less than to be
resist the will to shrink away, when time
spares nothing, and the race is yet won...
by the weary



________________________________
Miles Davis, Jazz Musician, and in this instance:
My Funny Valentine, and Something I dreamed Last Night
by the Miles Davis Quintet.