I am-phibian

A line in the sky
caught my eye

the barbed hook
of crescent moon

took no time
pulling my chin up

and out
of my element

and taking my breath
outside
the warm body

weightless
I can only wait
for lightness
to break

through
a comforting zone

at terminal velocity
relevant
only to the speed of
dreams and nightmares

piercing through
this illusion

of you
waking up
or falling down
but always catching

a peek
under the surface.



Painting by Lionel Walden, 'Twilight, Evening Star and Crescent Moon' c. 1925 in Public domain.

Blue faces of things

On that very day,
in another Place,
it was more than
a later hour-

the heavy things
balancing on edges
would finally come down
creating a gentle breeze
over Here

and the nose would pick-up
and strong sense of Elsewhere,
only meaning
there was Poetry
being read in corners.

From the lips,
this music dips between
inkling and imagination
like a murmuration,
how things gather in ceremony

for harmony's sake.
And yet,
all the anonymity allowed
a tiny voice
to move through
this heavy Time,

passing on the thought of
levitation and how it was
never up to us
to do anything about the
thinning air out There.




Painting by Harriet Backer (1845-1932), c. 1883, in Public Domain.

Timethrift

How do we squander our breath
by counting to ten
or three?

I noticed a boys crown
his head was down
facing his lap, holding a short pencil.
Clearly, he was not writing,
By the way the pencil moved
in random places across the page;
middle, top right, bottom center.

Of course, everyone wanted to see,
even the old lady sitting next to him
who kept adjusting her hair,
her blouse, her scarf
acting uninterested.
He could smell her short
breath, I could see
her check the time.

A waste of time.
Drawing straws.
I was reading,
there was nothing to show
not a figure or shape to be seen
from the words I inhaled,
no crumbs from my feast,
no incensed smoke crept out
of sealed chambers.

I was high-hovering, as clouds do.
I never noticed
how many pages had turned,
how close I was to the end
nor had I kept record
of the miles traveled along
the lines it took
to get in between
here and now.

Painting by Charles Joseph Grips, 'Waiting for a Loved One' c. 1894 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

(In)different

Her heavy greedy breaths

no longer pull air

from our shared spaces.

Her restless body,

laden in sleep, no longer flings

appendages against shared walls.

His voice, 

after all tese years

is distant and muffled,

a life spent

with his intonations 

and likenesses 

filling the quiet spots

of time

and privates places 

like memory.

I find myself

in new places,

quiet, desolate, 

unable to move

and different

than I thought.

Most sensibly,

and quite inevitably,

my own shallow gasps

leave no consideration 

or room for the limbs

to dance 

or provide sound
a body
to absorb.



Painting by Ford Madox Brown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Firmament (Hi-Q)

Why always the sky?
Does your hair move in the wind?
Breath is not just mine.


Image credit by Brian W. Schaller (Own work), Windy Day Great Sand Dunes in Colorado (U.S.A.) [FAL], via Wikimedia Commons.