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.

The Night the Power Went Out

She spun the gold band and diamond around her ring finger,

watching it as if the words she sought were in the jewel.

I tapped my foot and extinguished a candle as the last

of the wax dripped onto the envelope she’d just given me –

the envelope from her fiancé, letting me know.

Finally letting me know that she’d never be mine.

“You know”, she said, looking up, “I’d have left him for you

and it could have been your ring, not his, on my finger.”

I placed a new candle in the melted wax of the old

and let it grow cold, and harden. I didn’t respond.

“If only you’d have asked me to, I’d have been yours.”

Lighting the new candle, I heard a gasp behind me,

where she was. Turning, I saw the tears, each like diamonds

identical to the one he gave her. “Why didn’t you ask?”

I swallowed the diamonds in my throat, put the candle down

between us and lit it, lighting the face I’d loved for years.

I could never trust a girl who’d leave one man for another,

and I told her so, and I saw her to the door and said,

“I could never trust you.” She left, and I lit candles.

High Water

Tight curls of blue and green
Twirl about my toes, now
About my heels. How quickly
This playful current becomes
A raging torrent of red
Clay washed up in the flood.
I’d run to higher ground
To escape this high water
If only there were ground
To which to escape.

There is none, and still
The water rises.

Anxiety. Fear. Worry.
The water’s at my chest,
But I keep my head.
Pump my legs to keep afloat.
I grow tired; the water pulls
At my skin: down, down, down.

And still the water rises.

“Give up, let me take you.”
The torrent speaks to me –
Am I losing sanity?
All about me the voice
Echoes.

I struggle with the surface,
“Let me live!” I cry, to which
I receive no answer.
I surrender. The current
Envelopes me, embraces
Me like a child dearly missed.
I sink, I must be leaden;
Down to where I have no hope
Of ever breathing air again.

The water’s clear at depth.
Cool, crisp and clean, pleading.
Pleading with me to let go –
Release the oxygen
That I so desperately
Hold in my lungs. This is it.
I exhale.

Soon all will be darkness.
I wait until my lungs
Must inhale, by reflex –
Wait until water fills them.

“Trust me.” I hear vibrate
In every molecule of
Hydrogen and oxygen.
And thus, at last I inhale.

Water is denser than air
In the lungs; denser, yes,
And richer. I’m breathing
Deliciously, like I’ve
Never breathed before –
As if these lungs were made
To breathe water, to which
Air is a mediocre
Substitute.

Yes, I am breathing. Alive!
Deliciously, delectably
Alive! And I’ve come so deep
Now, that never will I
Have to breathe wretched air
Again! I am free!

The water is all about –
Without me and within me.
I am not the water,
But the water makes me free.