i close my eyes and feel your fingertips
drag circles on elbows and knees, joints
where interstitial movement reciprocates
and there i am with you, though we may be
far apart, the smallest trembling of my eyes
brings images to a waking dream, that life
can be so sonorous with you, hairs inside
my eardrums quiver quake with bursts of
you, the pouring forth elucidates a hidden
point of view, memories of conversations
play across my ears, momentary ecstasies
expand to fill my mind, the room, our years
what is this stuff? wide river flows between
us, diverted tapped bottled to quench the
thirst, children’s thirst, or friends or lovers
yet still more, torrential with the rainfall or
a parched trickling creek in dead of august
where the herring spawn and the heron fish
where the ospreys hunt and the seagulls peck
at scraps or one lucky pluck, and here grackles
scratch and scrape at the shoreline for a meal
and when we roar and flood and all detritus
is bandied down to sea, rapids foam white
there’s no room for anything but our water
floating way up here with you, the dazzling
star burns cumulonimbus into blue, and as
your sweeping arms lifted me way out into a
great wide open azure, the funnel clouds were
building all afternoon, cyclonic rotation now
ripping violently and i am torn pulled apart
the darkened sky obscures our view, and if
i cannot see you now, i let the tornado whip
me to and fro, trusting that a fair jetstream
or passing airliner will loft me back to you
i was fearful once, but when i knew, that if
i could only trust this feeling, tender or raw
like my heart’s put out to view, and now i’ve
shattered the glass, so like an art thief you
could take it, and if you want it on your
wall, or you could keep it in your pocket
and if you tore a piece to eat, i think i’d like
that much better than caged in my own chest
how did we get this close together, did we
slide in by inches, some days we'd sprint
miles in seconds, on others we'd creep a
millimeter, and with your trowel digging
in our barren plot, you’d pass me fistfuls
of seeds, and just the ones you dropped
would sprout a garden beneath our feet
time is not enough, it takes your love to
make it something, and as the seconds tick
my eyelids yearn to open, but then i wouldn’t
notice if i stuck them shut, cos either way i see
your face, and i’m reflected in two brown eyes
and the tip of your nose blurs as you move
your lips to meet mine, is it a dream, or is
it my memory, or it is just another of the
blesséd days on a whirling rock with you