I know we meet
people for a reason
and every time I didn't
think it was the case,
hindsight proved me wrong
ten times out of ten.

But us? I can't seem to accept
you were a stepping stone,
a lesson, a memory etched
in my spirit only meant to
redirect me to another place.

I just don't want what comes next
without you here to share it with me.

Tell me why I can't seem to
come to terms with us being
not only impermanent
but seemingly forgettable.

I cannot bring myself to let go

The sound of Christian’s voice stirs me, awake
the vision of undulating ridges—verdant—
as my head falls, slowly, the window of the van
a glimpse of light through the rock on water
My coup de foudre. Southern France
with winding roads and biking hills
Take me to where the Ardèche flows.
Goodbye to the sweater shed from shoulder.
Lunch eaten fresh in October by the river.
Comté and baguette spread on our blanket.
We are off to Nîmes
Where butterflies are chased, beneath the bridge
the water rushes below me.
Delicate steps.

In Arles, the Rhône
where I can dream.
A quiet stream only for me
and those whose memory swims on
behind the easel—
natural and wild—so near—
masked by morning mist
that brushes, alters, clouds Vincent’s canvas
to a “foggy day over the Rhône,” we should say
and an old painting feels like home under
the stars. Am I free?
River scintillates in the dark of night
where I sit. The reflection is of me.

Out on the ice as the season turns
the lake groans in leviathan language
and I understand, I do

But routine decides the route, not me,
and this floor might spiral fracture
as a passing thought
to those dark waters

The hedgerow pulse
seems quickened as the dipped flit
of three blue **** from here to there
declares that something is coming

Maybe too early to call spring,
the jackdaw on a slack wire
is still willing to give energy to balance,
as his eye sees good things

And the fettered earth begins to flex
as something elliptical
solar
inherent
returns to tickle us

Wet grass caps toes,
a long missed inconvenience,
each pace lifting
weight long loved

The dappled, leaf stopped light
tries to placate,
but you won’t stay

Like time and tide
you wipe your face clean
and disappear through trees
with no trail

I shot the breeze today
with crickets, beetles,
spiders and caterpillars,
we held a moot.

Each representative, a voice:
words in the clamour
to be heard

In these lands of
many common grasses,
breeze told anecdotes,
arachnid needs
and insect calls for attention
often get ignored

Stopping to sit,
look through clutches of eyes,
sing with rattled wings
and chew cud,
can help retune the din
to be cleanly heard

Bewildered by the difference,
the vast, unknown shape of it all

Not moments before,
ensconced in familiar tangles,
routinely fed and tended by parents
who flared and chattered
at the merest prospect of a threat,
met only by bolshy robins
who scoffed at fear
and tumbles of sparrows
who hid in each other

This necessary, Hail Mary leap
sees me petrified
grounded at the foot
of an adulthood full of flight,
song and the weight of freedom

if I can just get through
these cat clawed days and nights

A green myth
to explain away why things
just aren’t quite right
and the briar patch of ages
twists in verdant sinister ways

The familiar snag and scratch
bleeds differently
and won’t be soothed the same
so welts scar visible
and tell tales

New normals are bandied about
with as much thought
as the path that led here
and the beatification of old normal
is sealed

~ Like acid rain from your closed eyes,

~       the Earth's tears bleeding,

~             for all you see is gray.



~ Grey,

~       like the animal,

~             living up to 400 years,

~       usually beautiful like flowers,

~       housing 25% of it's habitats

~       inhabitants, very vital to them,

~ from acidification, climate crisis,



~       sadly, destroying,

~             these 'rainforests

~                   of the oceans',

~ coral reefs.