Sneaking away from home to write in a cafe

 

     The Moony café now a restaurant once

      was a nave where I stopped 

     many eves after work 

                       before reuniting 

with the domesticity 

     my family of six 

     had wrought.  

I liked to sit in the back 

     along the wall--patron chats

    did not distract 

from the guttural

ones I seek with

    my journal. 

Sometimes the word winds 

     blew 

across the pages, sometimes 

     so hard 

               they pressed down 

on my hand, sometimes 

     only a light snow of longings, 

sometimes making sense,

    sometimes not, sometimes 

words landed perfumed, 

sometimes not.  

When I got home, my lateness 

     was forgiven but sometimes 

     not. 

Even now decades gone, 

     I am startled I got away 

    with it so often, sometimes 

I cannot bear to remember 

how I stole the time, 

     sometimes I can.  

Hard to breathe

Oh this man. 

This man who stands before me 

smiling. 

This force working on me.  

When his knee leans

on my knee, we blush. 

His knee admits what 

he is thinking 

and my breath 

is my confession.  

Our pulse no longer

under our control.  

Now I know his secret 

and he knows mine.  

The problem is:

I have a man 

and he has a wife. 

We are just  magnetic poles

standing much too close. 

His north pulls hard on my south.  

The field between us 

gaining power. 

We cannot be judged.  

What is happening is simple physics.   

Invisible forces circling 

the center of our beings.  

I will pull us apart. 

I will pull     pull      pull      

us far apart.  

I will defy the laws 

of Nature. 

Another birthday

Ahhhh another birthday. 

I've had many but beg

for more despite 

the gruesome 

consequences.  

Oh Universe, let my glow fade 

as slowly as the coil 

inside a burned-out bulb.  

My friend fought death with every weapon.  

Every full moon egged her on 

but she vanished anyway.  

Death as much a miracle as life. 

Is it not confusing 

to see thin air where 

your friend stirred the soup 

and poured it steaming 

into bowls, one for you, 

one for her?

Savory soup 

over which you chatted 

with the leisure of Redwood trees 

that will flower in their fairy ring

2000 more years.  

As if our presence had roots 

that stabilize the world 

we stand on. 

My dear man's laugh 

still hangs in that same thin air.  

The echo fading not by seconds 

but by years. 

Is it not a miracle that a mind pulsing 

with wit and song will cease? 

Because chemistry always 

comes undone, because rain 

sweeps away the soil

silt by silt until 

just the stones below remain.