What I feel

What I feel
when I feel, or touch,
my tips, touching your skin,
dancing delicately on top of it,
from back to belly and down
to thigh and calf, butterfly feet
peppering their precious petals,
is more,
more than feeling
yes, love, but also awakening
the me, stirring, I've been
missing
without you

(for Jill)

Xenophilia

I. Sower

In the crinkled-up inkling of a question...

Cracked voices found me
as they fled throats full-
filled with a caked red dust

Their fleet pleas hounded me:
“Don’t forsake this stony ground.
Lay on patient hands

“Bone-hard, break it. Uproot
its thorns. Distract the birds
toward other pursuits”

I soaked in their shattering
chorus, then it fell – silence.
Someday my plants will come

II. Soil

In the lush crush of hushed hours...

The come-as-you-go wind came
and she scatter-rained
the sparkly seeds she carried

Maybe she had no plan, or
maybe the plan was to sow
her songs chaotically

Either way, she graced me
with one seed to grow. If I can
tend it ever so tenderly

Its complexity will push
through headlong to bear fruits
and miraculous perplex me

(Inspired by the Parable of the Sower, and a continuing conversation with a friend)

A sinful synaesthesia

When I said “I love you,” I lied
with a drifting and dreamy head
across the velvety sea
I imagined
resting and narrowly defined
in the nakedness
at the edge of your lap.

I have a history
of over-indulging
mixed-up senses.

I tasted the sight
of a gently curved nose.

I caressed the scent
of a lightly perfumed neck.

I’ll speak but not hear again
of the salty, savory, sweetness;
all bitterness has gone.

It’s not that I binged
so much as feasted
after a prolonged period
of self-deprivation.

And now I’m caught
between two urges:
To shave, to shear, to no longer
shabbily make shrift;
Or to revel
in the sloppy temptation
of recalling you.

Powerless I'll watch
the dissembling
tomorrow makes.

Before it comes, whisper-soft,
I repeat my mistake,
and unreliably say,
“I loved you.”