Lakeside Look Serenade

their mint withered while we were away, in the crisper drawer.  when we returned I could smell our house smell.

their bitterness may have been attractive, but the middle finger outside the bait shop was a nail in the coffin. maybe they were trying to be cute, you suggested.

their kids took down from the top shelf our token baseball. Soiled it thoroughly and failed to put it back.

A heavenly breeze kissing the trees

life's cruel twists manifest themselves, under minimal scrutiny, through neighboring windows, down that gravel path but for the grace of god... Yet we wither as winter reeds, pull the cord to withdraw the blinds.

"I am angry that I feel no outrage."
- Denise Levertov

they lifted the boat out of the lake and I imagined myself lifting it, felt the heave in my chest, the catch in my breath

they tasted a sampling of fresh local honey and I queued to try some, Pavlovian saliva accumulating at the promise of its floral sweetness

they danced to the band's groove and I noticed, from the back bench, my knee keeping time, my lips right along mouthing the words

I stand and I wait for the touch of your hand in the June night

my dance is hesitancy, my tongue untasted, my journey moored

"I've made a lot of mistakes."
- Sufjan Stevens

perhaps I need to diffuse this tension. The lake's face doesn't glitter. It's beach is a glace of indurate mud. 

perhaps I need to fill my mind. Eyes swivel to the quiescent stack of books left ajar. Swipe to refresh page.

perhaps I need sex. To feel a body fill a body. Revive the dismal flame with some brave passion fling. 

My love, do you know that your eyes are like stars brightly beaming

out of darkness, light. out of silence, sound. out of gas, walk.

"I would like to believe my dread was for the human condition
 but of course it was for me."
- Joan Didion

when we took this trip we didn't know how we were going to pay for it. Funny how life  supplies you. That's why I don't pick flowers anymore, I try to learn their names; eriastrum and bromeliad.

when we first got together you thought we were going dancing and I thought we were going to move in together. Sacrifices were made. Funny how I thought I needed the placebic validation of a woman to escape my self-imposed prison of feeling worthless, and how, now, it requires a vacation to the lake make the time to go out dancing with you.

when we watched the final dawn draw its fiery thread over the water, our last day before returning home, we were half asleep, a silver spider webbing in the window caused you to scream and I screamed too, then laughed, in atonement. It was funny.

Let us stray till break of day in love's valley of dreams
Just you and I... a summer sky 

 believe and know. forgive and grow. give and go. 

Quodlibet da Luz

 not the saints themselves but the idea of saints
or boddhisatvas if you bend that way
the cradle of santicty apendanted around your neck
a whole red alphabet of purpose and direction

look to the sky

 not the hunger of Erysichthon but the defiant key
or kitten tender consolation, pet,
knowing them ancients knew the plight, not you though,
nothing personal, well a little bit personal

through the trees

 not running the maze but the knowing how to run mazes
unlike a career in tree chromosomes, say
nothing proficuous about it, this skill of seeing shadow
ahead and intuiting the source of the light

the sun