You were in your wedding dress
Ivory silk
We must have been coming from the beach
You had the hems hitched up in your hands
Shouting something
I couldn’t hear
Trying not to drag
Ivory silk
Through wet sand

I fell asleep in the arms
Of a white tree
That had fallen
From the bluff above
The sun was burning
Orange holes in the sea
Like I had forgotten
Where I belong

I was searching for some lost animal
In the dreams I had,
Magical beetles
With painted bodies
Probed in and out of the wood
Drawing black lines
On a map
In a country I had never been to
And now I understand
That no animal is ever really lost
They slowly become invisible
As you loose the power
Of your vision for them.
and who has the power
to give us back our eyes
when the animal
is finally lost?

I'll hold you while you wet my shirt
in my arms with your tears,
and if you should find yourself here
the silk would slip to the floor
and we
melting together
into the floor
to become one
with the silk

I'm not sure I would sleep that night
I would be watching the dim light
of night time constellations
drift through your hair,
watching the rise and fall
of worlds
soft dreamy breathing,
wanting to touch you again
longing for the morning light
to illuminate the universe
of strange charm
in the rays of light
through a window,
that whisper
with silent  fingers,
"Open your eyes
sleeper,
and have me again before breakfast."


And my desire
the warmth of sunlight on a frozen peak
and a single tear from the ice
and as it reaches the heat
of the valley
a raging torrential fire
flowing into the ocean of you.

He entered the train at the Chestnut Hill station at 7:30, just like he had done yesterday and the day before that and the years stretching back and his head hurt thinking about it, this cyclical pattern of his life, if it could be called that. No, it was more like a means to an end, only lately he began to feel that he was merely the means. Yes another faceless work-a-day daddy in a world full of other faceless work-a-day daddies, filing single file into trains, into offices that all looked the same, back into night trains, back to the house that looked like every other house except for the numbers on the door.

Sometimes he wondered if he wandered through another door would he find the same things filling the spaces within, as if filling these spaces somehow filled this vast tunnel he felt passed right through him, right on through the floor. He could hear the screech of metal on cold metal as the train turned a corner,  a naked bulb overhead blinking off on, off on, like he was a stone falling in a bottomless dream that somehow passes through the emptiness silently, maybe occasionally passing by another quiet, falling stone.

OK he had to focus now, read the morning paper, something…

For some reason, unknown to him he looked up as she passed by him in the crowd moving into the next train. He noticed her eyes, like she had been crying and it seemed like she noticed him. Not in a obvious way like a man would, but in a subtle glance in his direction, some slight hint of reconition. And there was something about her that flooded him with memories. Remembering when he was living the artist's life on South Street. It was just a bombed out loft with red brick walls and cold water and that single space heater that she used when she modeled for him. And at night in winter they wouldn't bother turning it on after torching the town, one art opening at a time, having breakfast at the Galaxy diner at 3 AM and then falling into bed together until their body heat warmed the sheets, warmed each other.

He was wondering already what his evening would be like, perhaps like last night,  eating a TV dinner and watching an old black and white movie in the dark, the kids asleep in the other room and she would be out again, another meeting, another something vitally important. And he would get to the part in the movie just before Rick kissed her, before they missed the train, before he fell into a dream that he spoke to her, before she passed into the next train.

And he would wake again at 3 to find the note on his chest, “I didn't want to disturb you”.

And he carefully placed the note back into his journal, turned and went back to sleep.

14X20 Watercolor on Paper

This isn't Kansas
anymore


and I didn't realize
at the time
that the house of rain
somehow could
with the right
slant of the sun
the summer solstice
through aligned stones
warmed by a heat they did not create
across this line of sight and
these clouds sliding
across the skin
it feels like
just a few cells
before
they actually touch me
counting the minutes
between the thunder
and the lightning.

What is it about the sun
shinning through the rain
and where did all the color come from?
when I thought rain was grey

And the Anasazi wash
oh it's a gutter alright
a gutter like a summer
thunder storm
and the rain so cool
I'm a boy in a bathing suit
and the warm rain
is rushing across
summer lawns into the gutter
rushing through my
butt crack
because I'm sitting
here in the gutter
in the summer rain
sailing a paper boat
to somewhere
I have never known.

As the rain falls
so does
           your love

bathe every
                  open
object of the world--

In houses
the priceless dry
                         rooms

of illicit love
where we live
hear the wash of the
                                rain--

There
          paintings
and fine
             metalware
woven stuffs--
all the whorishness
of our
           delight
sees
from its window

the spring wash
of your love
                      the falling
rain--

The trees
are become
beasts fresh-risen
from the sea--
water

trickles
from the crevices of
their hides--

So my life is spent
                              to keep out love
with which
she rains upon

                         the world

of spring

                    drips

so spreads

                     the words

far apart to let in

                           her love

And running in between

the drops

                   the rain

is a kind physician

                              the rain
of her thoughts over

the ocean
                     every

where

           walking with
invisible swift feet
over

         the helpless
                            waves--

Unworldly love
that has no hope
                            of the world

                            and that
cannot change the world
to its delight--

           The rain
falls upon the earth
and grass and flowers

come
          perfectly

into form from its
                           liquid

clearness

                But love is
unworldly

                and nothing
comes of it but love

following
and falling endlessly
from
          her thoughts

Shambhala Sun Article By Pema Chödrön

This morning I flipped open a book that a friend gave me a couple of years ago and it opened to the pages where this talk was writen and it confirmed for me a need to be quiet for a while. Lately I've been standing outside of myself and watching this fool trying to fix something that wasn't broken to begin with and I think well yeah, I'm OK with this life the way it is and I remember when I felt no need to check email because there was nothing in my inbox I needed to respond to. I was content and I was OK with that and now I'm a fool too and I'm OK with that as well. Yeah maybe being somewhere in the middle is good because contentment doesn't create and desire can leave you like a mad man screaming
STELLA!!!!!
As the train screeches on rusty tracks around the corner.