Evening Out, Recalled

 

It was a delicious meal.

My heart pumped all through the time I was eating it

as it had before and has continued to do every moment since.

As it was in the beginning, 

It was snowing outside

but the restaurant had a fireplace and was softly lit.

You were there, and as I ate, I loved you and felt happy.

is now

On my plate, the gone moments

of a breeze and the scent of new grass; the rhythm 

of a place and season. The ability to move and exist.

and ever shall be

I remember that evening

even as it has vanished, as you have vanished,

as the meal and place and I myself have vanished

world without end

The gold of the brandy

in your glass, the smoothness of the skin of my hands,

all appears and vanishes in my memory as it, too, vanishes.

Amen, my love. Amen.

__________________

Music: Vivaldi Gloria

The Boffin

 Of course, we all fumble at first,

doofing up out of our childhood like baby turtles.

There it is, all at once, 

the Sea of Love,

and we scramble for it, driven by

instinct

movies

pop songs

and our own bodies bolting away with us.

But that's kid stuff.

At some point we think we've got it,

that we've become some sort of love boffin

smug in the sugar bowl of partnered mid-life.

Look! No hands! 

Up on the two-wheeler and thinking NASA needs us.

Oh, little turtle, little turtle rules the waves. 

Hang your heart on the sawtooth coat hook a few times

and all that changes. 

You find out you married a Matryoshka,

a total stranger.

Big and slow, you're back out there among the hatchlings,

drinking too much

doing stupid things to your hair,

fumbling again, tangled in the seaweed,

wishing you were dead.

Oh little boffin, doofing up out of Love's trash can,

now you know how much you never knew.

What was it all for?

You'll find the answer to that when your own grown child

sits crying at the kitchen table, saying mom it hurts so much.

You'll reach out, try to wick away their pain, and helplessly say,

I know,

honey,

I know.

_______

for Sunday Muse #241. 

Music: Tom Waits Sea of Love

The Landlord of the Moon

 

The landlord of the moon 

likes a little respect with her coffee,

a rose on her pillow 

                                  and all the rest.

She knows she's not loved 

but that's not the point hardly.

She keeps rum on her wrist

                                                and salt on her breast.

It's nothing personal.

No weary argument moves her much,

and it's best to remember

                                             her bird can't sing

except when it's raining

inside suitcases, outside train stations, and such.

Better bow to the east

                                        and kiss the ring.

Still, the landlord of the moon

falters while the factory turns 

and the sun, her master

                                          lounges and leans,

casual and careless

mocking her with jazz hands and money to burn

til she lays, each noon

                                        her heart at his feet.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List #7 (Langston Hughes)                                       

and your bird can sing ^^

Je Ne Regrette Rien

 

Here is the door you did not go through.

You, ghost handed, 

the handle deaf, 

non-days gathered,

a luggage pyramid entombing clouds and afternoons

discovered centuries later 

by fictions wearing anvil boots.

Come, recover here as the iron rails of empires

rise and intertwine, cobras

reciting the Romantics

with voices quilted from collected rhododendrons.

Stay with what is real,

the blistering sun, or the blue ice calving

every next minute 

into each moment's astonished respiration.

I love you.

I don't love you.

I have never met you.

I can't live without you.

What use the playing cards of a ferret scrying in a tumbler?

There is another door,

an infinity of mirrors,

One True Path

and a million sherpas hauling sermons

up Everest for nobody.

Forget this door, Fortunato its drunken ticket taker.

Walk away,

go home, 

slip yourself into a vase bed and bloom wildly

between the cracks of dreams.

Rise, 

regret nothing,

and proceed in any direction

jubilantly,

automatically,

as even the slightest blade of grass will, like a deity.

____________

for The Sunday Muse #187.