the raindrops cling to your velvet petals
and i am reminded of ballroom gowns
with satin sashes and ruffled skirts–
those dresses of dreams
and fantasy and childhood fairy stories
that still haunt the halls of memory
with forgotten echoes of romance
and misty mirages of everlasting love
robins sitting on bright blue eggs
an elderly couple holding hands
Bobbie Gentry on the radio in the middle of the day
a stranger with a kind word
coffee with an old friend
the sunday afternoon nap
black tea with extra sugar
i searched for you in my dreams the
other night, and heard fragments of lost
memories tap-tapping on ruffled edges–
later, i realized it was just the rain
up or down can be arbitrary
“it’s going to be cold tonight, down to 36”
“hey, what are you up to? i just got home”
“if i were skinnier, i could pull that off”
“i’m a very proud cat daddy”
“hi, i’d like to have both my nipples pierced”
“she must like yellow, she has yellow flowers everywhere”
“pain just reminds us that we’re alive”
sometimes the lushness of life surprises
Well if they freed me from this prison,
If that railroad train was mine
I bet I’d move it on a little farther down the line
Far from Folsom prison, that’s where I want to stay
And I’d let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away…..
Folsom Prison Blues written by Johnny Cash, 1955
the heavy silence of a mid-May morning,
fills in the blank spaces and resting places,
of a fleeting memory
these smells
make me
close my eyes–
and sigh
your body and its reflection
resemble a bracket,
emphatically holding the day–
every call from screeching gulls,
each breeze rippling marshy waters,
all the tiny gnats hovering above the flat surface,
and every stray desire dispelled by me,
and perhaps by you, on that waning afternoon
spanishwoods 