Because you are not a stranger
usually I am too reticent, restrained, packaged away
in some hat box with a faded bow
to reach, to linger, to listen
I am a carefully tended garden without entrance
belies her wild interior and the need she has to be untamed
and still you spoke
tearing through the bower, the shrubbery, all my thorns
as natural if we had just been interrupted. having a long conversation
bounding into my life with that long-legged gait reminding me
of those California girls with skin you want to photograph
and ride on horses with until their cheeks get hot
no you are not a stranger
anymore than my French fatalism
is contrary to the opalescent sway of things
we all hang in some form or fashion
from our necks till light betrays our dreaming
and we must enter the sore lot of reality with something of
a bitterness
still tasting on our lips
that Chapstick kiss, faintly cherry
you have
known me before
we have existed before now
a familiar, in intonation and even
that shared day of birth
as if
the light
of the projector
and the quilt of screen
wrote us a history
far from dead ends that labor over hand outs
people who wear you down without
saying a word
with just the fatigue of their eyes
how they cannot see anything of that invisible world
we exist for.
You whisper; “with your eyes closed
you know the sound of my voice and its certainty
its pedantic, bordering on monotonous glee
because it is already familiar”
as something
grown before thought
had elected her bloom to
cover with fragrant reminder
every space of green with flower.
Sometimes even fear meets her match
in destined spots blessed by more than our
mortal hands
I think you have
some power of mind reading
when you turn the page
and set the needle to play
my tune of the winding road
I feel a circle
moving across my body
like a finger tip tracing
without permission and yet
necessary
the outline of my
shadowed self
brought into light.
You usher joy
spreading a scotch blanket
among simple earth and its undulation
though I would turn lobster red
obeying, the sun bleeds behind horizon as if
with the power of your intention
you had dimmed the switch.
Our hands wind together
yet
even if you hadn’t told me
even if I hadn’t known
your hands would have
given it away
as your mouth
a perpetual patient smile
looks to find
a way to speak
without words.
I would ask
what is your intention with my heart
like a concerned father
watching shifting eyes
only you stare back at me
unblinking and open
like a pearl within the care of its shell
it is always, you said, in the eyes
and I reply
how then did you know
before you found me?
when we had not yet
beheld the other?
To which you reply;
I wrote it first
I prayed for you
I dreamed it before
then you were there
holding me in your lonely eyes
like a lighthouse shall
dim only long enough
to light another wick
and surely
guide
sailors
to
shore
for the one who I know in my heart
knows me in hers
because you are not a stranger
and you never were.
TheFeatheredSleep 