The shortest love story ever written

Sometimes I picture
Us,
sitting down,
                       shoulder to shoulder
and looking down
at an open book-
reading the same lines
but not understanding
each others words
So I will point
                        to a picture
Instead,
you smile
while I cry.


Painting by Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), 'Couple reading' c. before 1919 in Public Domain. 

Making magma

I’d like to draw a map of you

for perspective,

for options,

for borders, both imaginary &

reactionary.

Your vellum,

I now know like the belly of my palm.

And our lines converge, overlap, and seal off

familiar territories, provincial islands of natives,

like Us where

there is a sense of belonging,

lining up and finding places 

specific to our likeness and 
locale is in a sense

relative to distance to each other

within our limited spheres

flattened as Atlas can get
and remain.

Two souls collide Here, two bodies melt,

there two souls trapped, 
surrounded bodies of turbid water 

that become brackish by exchange.

This is all I can do 
with nothing else to make

but more magma

in these uncharted lands
and move on. 

Painting by D. Howard Hitchcock (1914) 'Moon and stars over Diamond Head' in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived)

The weakest link in the chain of being
Makes no lasting connections-

Through some set of instructions, like a recipe
My grandmother warned me
As most Norwegians do
Pick your battles,
She was no warrior but always got her way.

My daughter asked me why I gave her
Such unruly hair
I explained entanglement,
like genetics.

My son wondered if his absent father cared about him
I explained how black holes devour every event
Near their horizon-
Light cannot escape.

I listen to my mother every week
on the line-long distance,
and remind myself that gravity
cannot be forced to become
stronger or weaker-
here
-without proximity.

All the unfinished pieces I call quanta
Have been spinning, gathering, and weaving
Adams this evening,
I listen to strings beings played
somewhere in the distance
making music with wasted energy and vice versa
to feel harmonious.

My grandfather sings this one verse
Spin the tail of the Ouroboros-
Watch him chase his legacy,
Ask him where he is going
He does not say Entropy,
His mouth is full of chaos.
Spin, spin, spin the tales
O wee world weaver.

Now
It makes sense,
This is coherence

as a theory of relativity.

Photo By Fred C. Palmer (died 1936-1939) (Photograph of original postcard) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Ampersands asunder

Just (between)

You & I

ampersands like seeds sprout

One of Us

on either side

& I still

freeze sometimes

-deer at the sight of you-

safely separated by a symbol

We have made it

strategically situated solo

sharing Our time

with ampersands

(in between)

sowing seeds

growing individually

along the same line

You

& I follow

asunder.

Painting By Malyavin (http://territa.ru/photo/925-0-65632) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. 

Two Together we Gather

Words arrived when we needed them
to see and say, plea and agree, demanding consistency.

Women sought with their eyes, wide in panorama;

Men relied on touch, sensing these were what feelings felt like.

Fire forged us from animals into sentient shapes.

Sharing knowledge and words, we found each other, 
warm and understanding, under what we stand for.

They will hunt for us, they will gather for us, we will dwell 

Together. To gather round

the fire, together around the light of desire, gathering aglow, 
or rathering not to know what It is 
It defines Us, We Are verbs, an assemblage, a clan, we plan, 
dream of Time, live in the past.

To bring, to arrive, going and going to go.
To gather, to collect, to pick up, two scoop, too yield, to concede, two agree to a degree, too cull, to sort by inference and deduction,

lighter, an objective gathering.

Just sew, we make something new

pucker up, drawn in to each other, folded over and plaited, 
by book and by sea on a fellow ship.

Elementary applications, melting sand transparently, forging steel inherently buried in itself, gleaning with muster,

the speed in which it grows, a group, a gainsay, a mish-mash, an array of We

These and agrees, those oppose those,
Clarity, Consistency and Redundancy 
was never so necessary or honored 
in collective perspective: soundsthesame “WeareOnelappingoverWearenOnestrongertogetherareWenot”

The power of We

                       over the One

Is the difference of disbursement over displacement, 
laying it out, spread thin, barely enough to go a round and around a gain.
This Time for you. This Time for me. We may or may not agree. 
We both name what we see as it is to be true, because we said so. 

This is what I’ve gathered so far.






Image By Mervyn Peake Glass Blowers Gathering (1943) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.