The land moves
Waves of soil and asphalt
Break at my feet
Transport me
To a distant beach
And the love I shared there
I imagine the wind
Carries wafts of brine and low-tide
Amid the many scents of you
Across this rolling sea
And a beckoning highway
I reach out for a hand
That cannot be here
He was there
Then not
All in the space
Of a few final breaths
Now a ghost
Whose laugh is lost
But to memory
And longing
Gone twenty five years
In this time of cheer
And on this day
Am I reminded
A twinkle in the eye
Said more
Than words, sometimes said
Had ever said
I love you, son
Under a blood red sky
A metaphor
A cliché
I cannot resist
Blood red it is
And so too
This life journey
Heart broken
Love rent
By the loss of one
And in your eyes
I see you know
Feel the shadow
Across your soul
Confused you are
By your confusion
Where once you knew
Some clarity
As time and mind
Slip from you
So too do you
Slip from me
In the absence
Recollections induce the bittersweet
With time, perhaps, becoming less bitter than sweet
Losses lightened
By the moments, words and images
We’ve captured
The joys once lived
Remain in our memories
And in our hearts
In the empty spaces
Something new, perhaps
Something new to love
The monumental lines of architecture
Seemed to flex
As a bow drawn by its string
Then paused there
Taught, straining
As if for a steadying breath
The release
Was even more startling
And he felt the shock wave
When the discharged tension
Shook the earth
As the mammoth thing
Quite simply
Leapt from the ground
Untethered as it was
From gravity
It swam lazily
Through the thin atmosphere
Toward a horizon
It would soon enough
Disappear beyond
Because he tried so hard
To place features
On their bodies
On their faces
Which he just couldn’t recollect
Over time he’d lost
The recollection of the places, too
How odd
That the one crystal clear element
In this one otherwise tortured image
Was the frame shop
Filled with photographs and paintings
Recorded for eternity
So long as the people cried
They lived in their fears
They lived with their losses
Bemoaning the fate
Which had befallen them
Paralyzed with grief
Pix to Words 