My Mountain

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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.

Wash

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with water everything is pure
from sandy shores to lakes demure
it washes off and cools us down
and shatters each internal frown

with water we wash out the weak
replacing it with a stronger streak
of life that breeds within the deep
bringing forth the hope we need to keep

with water we have a clearer light
on days that inevitably end in night
it guides us there and guides us back
and washes out what once was black.

With This Pedal

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with this pedal I thee wed
a life that’s mine (inside my head)
to remember all that is momentous
and forget everything circuitous

with this pedal I will fly
into my life, by and by
taking with me all that’s past
leaving behind what I’ve surpassed

with this pedal I am me
more than elsewhere I could be
to speak my mind and ache my soul
to take the parts and make them whole

with this pedal I thee wed
a life that’s mine (inside my head)
to remember all that brought me here
to forget all that should disappear.

Idiom

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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.

Layers

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with turbulence bouncing her brain,
she rests her eyes
and recounts
(rebreathes relives)
the memory.

haunt
pleasure
remorse
renewal
and words that
can’t define it.

she traps it there
(behind the eyelids)
for no one else to see.

like a kidnapped child,
it will not submit
no matter how many
locks she places on its cage.

she searches for the keys
but
they have been lost in layers
of days and months and years
that only allow her this one
to keep
to keep without release.

Home at Last

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for a thousand miles
we see the reach of
the Mighty Mississippi,
the river we bought
for pennies on the dollar,
the river of dreams
(sometimes nightmares),
the river that feeds us all
and doesn’t feed us.

after cornfield gives way
to soybean field and
amber waves of wheat,
all i can think about are the bison
who ate and fertilized
this prairie, feeding
ten thousand generations
and yet
we destroy it
with unnecessary crops
feeding cattle that could
(and would) do the same as the bison.

as night gives in to day
we cross the border
and see cows in pasture
(home at last)
a truck with a Kentucky plate
(home at last)
and hope that one day
we will release
the native grasses
and allow the prairie
to be home at last.

Varying Shades

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somehow
despite their travels on
long-sunken ships
they have nestled in amongst
those that are native

in varying shades
of the colors of God
(who you hope to meet one day),
they intertwine
their lacework leaves,
dot the sky with flowers
as bright as our imaginations,
and root out homes in
fantastical forests.

though you think that only
ugliness
breeds each time they reproduce,
for the rest of us
all we see is the beauty
that still exists in this world.

Shine

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a flash and a dash
is all i really remember
(silvery as sun-spotted fish
darting in and out of rocks)

now the swim startles my senses
freezes my (once warm) skin
but i am like those fish and i
will shine, shine, shine under the sun.

When Reality Returns

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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

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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