Dancin' Moon Songcast Ep. 73 Eight Poems for Sheryl | POETRY SERIES EPISODE!

my dream

 

I see you like this:

you clutch the tiny warm ball

of a new brown field-mouse.

pressing it into the warmth of your

scented neck

where your hair bends gently in to

brush your careful fingers...

 

it is cold outside,

and your breath moves slowly

away:

clouds of warmth

in the snow-white sunlight,

your words of comfort, your

essence atomized,

released

 

and later,

if the mists linger in the

year-old plow-valleys

whispering, "It's alright...

All is not cold and hunger,"

you will still be there,

warm.

 

It is only a dream I have,

a dream in which I am

helpless and

nestled in your neck.

***************

 

in her bed

our daughter has had her one more story,

her one more drink,

and dreams the part of herself that we never see.

 

In our living room

we have a movie running,

the Canadian Rockies of the early 17th century shift

in some conflict involving

intimate campfire reds, steel-blue glacial arms

cradling white, and silver-gray aspen groves to move

your intent eyes... I chose the movie this time.

 

The couch is long enough for us both

as I watch this light playing upon your nightgown

it is more deadly than second-hand smoke:

the Canadian Rockies

moving in the lines of your face, the folds

of your clothing.

I am kneading these silver trout you lay across my lap in this

stream we make of our bodies.

I will lay you in the winter glow of aspens

and smooth the clothing from your skin

so you can warm by our fire---

night-breath bristling the

invisible down

of your neck, fanning the glow

of your eyes.

*****************

 

Alone for a Week

 

I've been shuffling

around the house in my thin moccasins

not bothering to turn on lights

or to use dishes, it is quiet

except for the purr of our neighbor's

mowing his homogenous grass in the last

moments of twilight;

the house is dark except for the night-lights

I haven't unplugged in our daughters'

rooms--- those lights

supposed to chase the shadows away,

as though it weren't light that created shadow.

 

At intervals, I wander into the family room, stare at

the couch, then the blank TV. I am

grabbing at the tail-end of the hour

as it slips around the clock in the corner and my

hands close around still air.

 

I wonder how long it will take for me

to use up all the air that spent at least some time

in your lungs, moving through your throat and

spilling over your lips?

 

I know enough to know that I'm not going to get any work

done tonight. I can't let go of the clock

long enough to get lost in some of this stuff you left so I could

complete, undisturbed.

 

But I don't think I like being undisturbed

or passing by the orange glow from

our daughters' rooms;

and suddenly as my neighbor completes his last lap across his

grass, the evening has gone deaf

and I know fully that silence is a taking away of

something, a loss.

 

Were I single like one of my friends, perhaps

I would use my dishes and fold the laundry

seeing how these things all have places in the week,

maybe I would throw open the windows to let

today's air in, but in your absence I find that

silence and darkness have new names

and don't whisper, or rise and fall beside me.

The thinness of these moccasins reminds me of the

ground and my weight upon it---

that I'm st