Like summer rain that never stays
like wayward breeze that bends the leaves
like sandwiches on Sunday walks
like sand brushed through my fingers
I tried to make you stop:
long enough to listen.

Like T. shirt worn on snow filled slopes
like a hand that dims a shaft of light
like a squirrel startled on a bough
like ice cream in a mountain stream
you hurtled through our make believe
with an empty scream.

It was your strength that made me draw breath, stop and ask who you were, of what were you made. When I heard you led a happy life, had a happy wife, I wondered that the world should be made this way and went my way with no thought of sorrow. It took a while for you to find me, through board meetings over coffee, I had no idea of an impression made until a meeting in a restaurant led to flirting, at least you were flirting and I was slightly shocked that you were a man like all the rest. The workings of your mind seemed to leave you stressed, you worked out situations on scraps of paper, seemed to miss the point, seemed to know very little about who you were dealing with. You needed control of every situation, wanted to build a nest, and I could have been lulled into a false sense of security. You were a man past your prime who knew so little of the world ,who had never heard of consciousness, in the sense that we have a choice how we live or die. It was your strength that first made me draw breath and when that turned to confusion placed me on the proverbial pedestal I came out fighting. Now you’re striving to neuter the edges while I’m searching for a bit of depth something to have made the pain worth while, something to lean on.

My eye holds an eagle’s flight
high in pure celestial sky
wheeling with her eerie cry to land
upon a curve of nerve,
a swerve becoming woman wrapped in home spun.
Black her hair and weathered cheeks
she passes on the mountain path
questions tumbling from our minds we follow
to a quiet place.
Then with eyes that hold our gaze
she makes us know without a word
that one may come and one must stay,
and I with small child turn away
until a later time.