We are binary stars, orbiting
our own center so close we may appear
as one. Perhaps we are — one heart
burning with choreography
set to its own beat. There’s a universe
out there, a kaleidoscope of stardust
swimming in a river of hope
where the future is bright
because two stars shine as one and
everything revolves around us.
My muse wears dark hair
when she chooses. When
she makes a decision
there’s confidence in her eyes
that overwhelms
any foreboding before
it can take root.
It’s the roots
that first defy her. No one
else could resist her beguiling smile
when she resolves
to turn it up.
She inspires my own
if she turns up.
As you flip through the pages
of my life
— in an upturned book
left open just for you —
I hope this thought
will comfort you
just as you sustain me:
My love was a boat
adrift in a salty ocean
nearly capsized
searching for port.
One day you volunteered
to be my anchor.
These pages turn
smoothly between your fingers.
Hope — or the appearance
of cloudy dreams lifting me
above
gray skies
underfoot — can be heard on the horizon
itself,
disrupted by frenetic thunder
no longer.
Fog — tribute to a once cloudy
future you’ve helped bring into
focus
with wire-framed
glasses — no longer obscures a rain-soaked path
insisting
we make this journey together
much longer.
When I finally stopped ignoring
the itch and embraced the warmth
indigenous to that indiscernible link
we share like a rope tethered
to two unlit woodpiles
waiting for ignition,
the spark provoked the catalyst
to combustion that could cross an ocean,
igniting the very water
that thwarts less resolved attempts
at scratching at heat
that runs deep.
They broke up on the balcony, waves
beaten back by the beach
somewhere between words and stuttered
“buts” that led nowhere but.
All I wanted was a cigarette but
who could enjoy a slow death while love
ran out of breath below, air escaping
exhausted lungs, tired of fighting.
We’ll try to imagine their journey that ends
here between drying, pre-loved beach-towels,
thinking there must be uglier
places to start over.
I envy the novelist, words
by the hundreds sliding fingertip
to screen, a playground of plot somersaulting
one sentence
to the next.
I grieve for the poet, whose
inert pen hesitates, immobilized
by the next word slipping though a fingertip,
monkey bars
out of reach.
I have yet to meet one I like.
Often Mumbled Musings