She turns the radio dial with tired hands,
chasing a voice through the crackling dark.
Every station fractures into static,
a snowstorm of sound that won’t let her in.
She leans closer, as if breath alone
could coax meaning from the broken hum.
The world feels distant, unreachable~
just her and the staticky hiss of unfinished thoughts.
Then softly~
a thread of music slips through the noise,
thin as a pulse returning after silence,
a single note glowing like a lantern
held out by someone who somehow knows her name.
She stills herself, listening,
the melody rising, warm and unafraid.
something in her chest loosens~
a knot she’d carried so long
she’d forgotten it was there.
The song widens,
filling the room with a light she can’t see
but feels, unmistakably,
like hands lifting the weight she never spoke of.
She closes her eyes.
The static falls away.
The music moves through her
like a truth she’d been waiting to remember~
a quiet, holy clarity
that finds her exactly where she is
and asks nothing
except that she let it stay.
The staticky-stars climax under intense blanket of Winter glow.
Your spouse can’t see your spirited green eyes that burn slow.
The friction of campfire sticks, the satiny slipperiness of moon.
Flames of blue, orange and red won’t be overcome too soon.
Pert rose petals, that once were goosebumpy and ice cold,
scintillate like fireworks until the grand finale’s loosed, uncontrolled.
Warm breath in a cold Winter’s steamy and a restless beast.
Lips lavish over late night feast, matches singe, sate increased.
Squirming under the leisurely complement of coals, coalescing,
Coolness of a blue lake vaingloriously countering, distressing.
A long midnight’s thrashing, sans pillory; the high beams foray.
Pillow talk, a sensuous squeeze, a high-diving elixir bouquet.
Ah those stars brilliantly glowing on a long Winter’s night!
Those limbs blush, rose petals crush, with unfettered light.
My life in here.
It’s all like- commercials.
Which have invaded me.
And I stare at them.
Random, numbing, and dull.
Projected on the walls.
Projected in my eyes that are closed, which is worse.
Images are still there, just deeper.
And they’re looking at me!
Lying to me about something they’re selling.
And the TV is off.
But they are here.
They are talking to me.
Flickering and staticky.
But still…
I am watching.
I can see halos sometimes.
I like to look in the mirror.
And see the staticky snow that outlines me.
My appearance is a secret,
All I see is the light that surrounds.
Surrounds me and serenades me.
Like an omen,
Or premonition.
Of badness?
Or of something else.
I can see halos sometimes.
I can’t see my face sometimes.
I like to look in the mirror anyway.
Those days are gone, set
afloat upon waves of air-
that in which we dreamed, for we
were dreamers...adrift in the water
that took us to wherever
the currents flowed-
into weedy patches-
weedy and twining like our minds,
like ivy vines on cobblestone walls,
always reaching and climbing
further into the clouds, swirling like
the streams we floated down.
But our youth is lost, as are the
summer days which grew cool,
stolen by the autumn breeze.
Oh,we still have those scenes,
leave-takings into yesteryear,
drifting along on those lazy, black tubes-
sunning upon the dam 'til
our skin baked a golden brown.
Those staticky transistors were never
fine-tuned, but the songs we knew
word for word, and the notes flew
high, swallowed by the blackbirds
gliding in the warm summer sky.
We walked a sash of dusty road,
with Duke dashing ahead, sniffing
grass and daffodils, on point for squirrels
and such, as he was the littoral keeper.
Now the pup has aged, and he hurts
as he circles his spot to lie, but nothing
has changed, really- except our bodies...
for our eyes still see ourselves as youth
reaching toward that summer sky.
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