First Kiss

Their foreheads meet as one in gentle touch,
Her hand on his, his fingers holding tight,
Shutting out the world that asks too much
For them to share a minute of their night.
He brings a single finger to her lip,
She tilts her head to look into his eyes
And gives a gentle kiss to fingertip,
Then happily she smiles at him and sighs.
In tender exploration, his lips brush hers,
So hesitant, his fingers find her cheek -
Their hearts begin to beat in nervous tremors,
Their glances meet again as knees grow weak
As tawny eyes and blue gaze lovingly
Curtained there by locks of blonde and ebony.

Of Circles and Salt

Lissome
my touch
underneath the moonlight,
delicately tracing
circles
and curves.

Salty
your skin
wrapped in midnight shadow -
I taste you once
and then
taste you again.

Ragged
my breathing -
I cannot keep eyes open
sinking deeply
into
sensation.

Wordless
your cry -
reaching the peak,
we fall back
breathless
into the night.

Along the River: A Lyric

I stand beside the water,
by the water
by the river
I stand beside the water
as it rushes to the sea.
Its voice is sweet and calming
as it flows by
as it goes by
its voice is sweet and calming
as it slips between the trees.

The geese call as they gather
there above it
glide into it
the geese call as they gather
then noisily fly on.
The willow trees, they murmur
bending over
leaning over
the willow trees, they murmur
as the water slips along.

I wonder what its song says
to the trees there
to the rocks there
I wonder what its song says
to the things that call it home.
Does it sing of where it started,
in the mountains,
snowfall's fountains
does it sing of where it started,
or of where it goes to roam?

I stand beside the water,
by the water
by the river
I stand beside the water
as it rushes to the sea.
Its voice is sweet and calming
as it flows by
as it goes by
its voice is sweet and calming
as it slips between the trees.

Autumn on the Water

Deafening the sound,
a thousand wings whirring as one,
feather and muscle
beating against the air
in their hurry to escape -
they drown out my thoughts
as we paddle into the pond
and the ducks take flight.

A lone hen left behind
cackles her feeding call for a moment,
then quack, quack, quack,
she too lifts from the water,
flies away,
and leaves me alone
with the gentle slurp of my kayak paddle,
and an echo of wind in my hair.

Sometimes

Sometimes,
when he is alone in his thoughts,
standing there in the open ground underneath a warming sun,
and the air is still and quiet,
the wind comes up, unexpectedly,
and nuzzles against his neck,
kissing his ears,
playing with his hair,
caressing his cheek
and he remembers her fiery eyes,
and the softness of her voice,
and unspoken longings,
the whiteness of her bosom,
his final loss.

Something in him stirs, then, at those moments,
and he pauses,
thinking briefly of the might have beens
that were not,
that could not be,
that did not happen,
and knows the touch of regret.
Then, like the wind,
sometimes, he sighs.

One Day Before the Tide Changed

He walked along the rocks
in the cool spring air,
ignoring the wind in his hair,
and how it tugged on his clothes.
He stopped to scratch his nose
and looked out over the horizon,
to where the sea met the sky,
and watched.

As he listened to the waves
and the seabirds crying
as they circled, flying
almost out of sight
he did not know why
he felt so restless -
the day left him breathless,
captured by the old magic
of wind and wave and light.


He thought for a moment
of his garden and his books
and the way his wife looks
when he talks of poetry,
and thought about Prufrock,
who talked of mermaids in the sea,
and fog and things that would not be,
and wondered about tomorrow.

Turning to go,
he did not see the shadowed shape
run her comb one last time
while he recited a hopeless rhyme
through perfect green hair,
then slip off the rocks into the sea
pondering the unknown mystery
of land and tree and earth,
the strange songs only humans sang.

They both went on their way,
he to the land, she to the bay
back to their ordinary lives
touched by the shoreline's magic.

A Conversation with Time

Has it been so long ago,
those nights,
nights when I danced for hours
to the loud beat
and the flashing lights,
glittering over the swaying bodies,
rich with the smell of smoke
and beer
and sweat
and lust
all wrapping around the music?

Time,
I tell you, Time,
the me in here
remembers just how it felt
to have the music
and the movement
take me places
beyond the taste of bourbon
and the flashing lights
and dreams of youth
and expectation.

I know you’ve heard it all before,
Time,
but still,
I cling to the memory,
and as the river of my life passes on,
I'm still the girl
who could dance all night
lost in the music,
and even as I sit and knit
and watch the minutes tick into hours,
I can be there again with just a thought.