Fault Lines

For a moment Atlas grew weak,

I found what I seek and left it behind.

Stones rolled, broke and replicated;

the sun devoured clouds dripping

 

the sweat of worry

poured out on the dry soil.

 

The foundation falters.

I am standing on nothing, but I am standing.

 

I looked into your simpering eyes

as the ground opened beneath us

and we fell and we felt free, smiling.

 

Hands clasped. Desires clashed.

We fell and we stood on nothing,

but we stood as we fell.

 

Our toes brush the bottom like a shallow lake.

The moon jumps from sky to water and back,

and still Atlas wavers, the foundation cracking.

 

I don’t know these words we say,

but I’m not afraid.

Barefoot

There are still bare branches outside the window;

browned, winter-kissed bramble shivers

lifelessly in the spring breeze,

smelling of rain and thunder.

The air rumors of life, but I’ve

yet to see it beneath these grey skies.

 

I don’t know how one goes about

starting these adventures.

Are my bare feet enough?

 

Sometimes, I still try to talk to the birds.

When we share the grass mattress I feel close enough,

so I chirp like a child that doesn’t know better.

A child can never know that they won’t talk back.

 

This morning the birds flew back into the grey skies.

I was left bare-footed beneath bare branches

that let the rain flood me and the browned bramble.

Waking to an Open Window

O! For the wide, white nights of the far North!

The warm breath of earth tinged with flowers

falling from the leaves that ousted them.

The ground white with Bradford’s pear blossoms,

reflecting nights that never truly dim to darkness.

 

And we lay on a carpet of clovers,

violet with the vibrancies of new life.

 

What is this world set on stone and soil,

fringed by cloud and outer oceans of vacuum?

If I were to feel the entire heartbeat

of the universe at large, would I

 

be less awed by that white heartbeat of yours,

beating violet in the clover beside me?