love

My Moon

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

the music has ended
(crickets are singing now)
and there are no cicadas here

their tiny legs call out to us
in the deep of night and the
light shining on my belly?

it is like that night under the moon
white sand encircling our toes
where i walked to the water alone

you remember. how anger and
longing threw us apart, how i
imagined a trip there alone, with them.

in a perfect circle, the moon
led me along the beach, wind
whispering the truth to me

we didn’t have electricity
a bathroom or a camper,
nothing but haste and desire

i think of this now only because
of the songs you have chosen
now ended, given in to insects

i will carry them (the music of
our lives) to sleep along with my moon.
i would be lost without it.

Forty-three Miles

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

forty-three miles
and we have left behind the skyline
(cash register, stadium, buildings so new
i cannot recognize their sunken Saturday lights)
that i saw first at seven, then nine,
then permanently at eleven

we are surrounded by pines
and the famous aspens,
the cabin built from the ground up
with logs pasted together,
stone fireplace, wood stove,
eclectic collection of furniture
(home away from home)

we follow the girls along
the not-so-traveled path,
pine emanating its Rocky Mountain
odor into our altitude-chilled skin,
and I remember
(oh how I remember)
why Colorado is
home, home, home.

My Mountain

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

For Olivia

walking together
hands apart
we could climb
slope after slope

it could be pretty
with shrubs
and wildflowers
and young scrub oaks

it might sprinkle,
sparkling your eyes
just a tad with
twisted rays of light

you could lead the way
and i could follow
(something new for me)
and give in to your desires.

but

it wouldn’t build
our hamstrings
with the ever-harder
mountain climbs

it wouldn’t bring
us (no matter how many slopes)
to the glorious
tops of fourteeners

it would never be the same
as tall pines giving way
to snow-covered peaks,
to insurmountable beauty

it would be you and i
new and rounded
(soft and wary)
not as hard-won as the years
(the poking-into-sky
sharp-at-our-cores
daring-to-be-ourselves
mountain peaks)
i have given to her,
my mountain,
my home,
my love.

Idiom

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

there’s no question that you and I
circle together in yin and yang;
just throw your worries into the sky
‘cause without your buck I’d have no bang.

it may seem like a common idiom
to say that opposites attract;
we swing on both sides of the pendulum—
when I go forward, you pull back.

but nothing’s common about our love
for thirteen years in the making;
without you I could not rise above
all that together we have forsaken.

so swallow these words and keep them deep
as black against white balance out;
until the moment of my last sleep
you have my heart without a doubt.

When Reality Returns

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

my legs ache from want
of the bike paths, of women on bikes,
mosquitoes and fleas now eat me alive
and i miss my mountain peaks
but
i feel i will miss this more
the gurgling babyhood smiles
the hickory-oak-taller-than-buildings forests
the relentless rivers and rains
the stick-to-the-skin heat
and everything i should hate
that i have head over heels
fallen in love with
but mostly
our family, our (second) home,
knowing the hollowness that will
sit between the hours of my days
when reality returns
and i will have to live without.

The Hollow of the Tree

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

just like the novel we have
taken turns reading
your love is as cold as the snow
(falling on cedars)

perhaps not to us
but we can feel its vacuous
chill as you glance sideways
towards them

and we wait
in the hollow of the tree
for the moment when
the snow will stop
and your love will keep us warm

July Daughters

/ lovizmytrio / 2 Comments

Mythili

you are a fish
swimming all day
a proclamation against the heat
losing all of last year’s fear
and washing it away with intrepid dives
into the pool that you proudly stand up in,
reminding me that you are
almost (but not quite)
a six-year-old mermaid
whose summer of swimming
will soon end with a splash.

Isabella

at your sisters’ request
they have segregated themselves
into the far back.
most oldest daughters would love a chance
just one
to be alone
but your lip pouts its way down the interstate.
i sit beside you and flip out two auto bingo boards.
within five minutes you have won,
within fifty miles your board is almost full,
within three hours we’ve gone through
every Extreme Nature card
and your only request
is that the ride will never end.

Riona

you are an echo of your sisters’ enthusiasm
the squeals of delight
tagging just seconds behind theirs
as we pull into the hotel parking lot
you shout, “They have a fancy fountain!”
only a nanosecond after Isabella.

this i could remember most
as it happens daily.
but what will make me most proud
will be the fourteen flights of stairs
that you climbed up
one foot on one step, another on the next
(remember when you were almost two
and couldn’t even stand?)
not one time, but two in a ten-hour day,
my soon-to-be-four-year-old
advancing to the top
of a milestone I will never forget.

We Have Won

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

Twenty perfect pictures
A cry-free four hour drive
Thrilled squeals that last for miles
A dip in the end-of-maze pool
A local restaurant in a sea
Of red jerseys and sauce
On the way to the stadium
With an ocean of red jerseys and lust

It’s summer and the sun has set
On fourteen flights of stairs up
The arch glistens from city lights
Alongside the river of all rivers
Our room sees it and smiles with pride
For we have won, we have won,
Our team, us, them, we have won.

Statistics

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

temperature: 87
sunset: 8:30
ETA: 8:52
humidity: 70
miles: 5.2
mosquitoes: 1.1 million
times down the slide: 100
gulps of Gatorade: 50
cars waiting to pass: 10
songs on the iPod: 40
streetlights lighting up: 11
runners speeding past: 2
girls on a bike: 4
love: 100%

It Isn’t Enough

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

it isn’t enough to be ten feet from
the door of our tent to the shore of the lake,
to paddle out into the cove side by side
for a miniature version of a date

it isn’t enough to swim with three girls
in ring-around-the-rosy circles into the night,
the campfire’s afterglow and the Milky Way
lighting their way into the warmth of their beds.

it isn’t enough to stay for one summer
because it could never capture our midnight swim,
our skinny-dipped rekindling after a week’s absence,
the fact that we haven’t lived,
we have never lived,
until the deep-down,
sparkling starlit beauty
of this moment in Kentucky.