§
I love your shallows
I love your deeps
And everything in-between
I Lay Beside You
I lay beside you, holding your hand in that twilight of touch before sleep
That slippery sleep
Beneath my hand I feel the rise and fall of your breathing
And I change my breathing to match yours
Inhaling and exhaling with you
Adrift in our sea
Rising and falling together
We are a wave, moving across the night
Finding our way to secret shores
If I felt your heartbeat, could I match mine to yours?
And beat as one heart?
One breath, one heart
In this way, I want to dream
With you, as one
Floating on into the endless tide
Forget the Moon
Forget the moon
For though it’s trusty, it’s tiresome
It’s rusty and wearisome
Nightly repeating its toneless tune
Give me the stars
With their shimmering mysteries
Their glimmering reveries
Flooding my heart with dreams from afar
§
To fill a Gap
Insert the Thing that caused it –
Block it up
With Other – and ’twill yawn the more
You cannot solder an Abyss
With Air.
~EMILY DICKINSON
Towards Love
I have packed my parcels
Each, in hope, wrapped
With love
Bundled wants and dreams
Ideas of future things
And love
They fit in well-worn cases
Stamped from those past
I’ve loved
I stand gazing at the glowing way
Marked out with lighted signs
Of love
I leave them there, my precious packs
Unburdening my heart and mind
For love
I step into the shining path
With a wind behind my back
Towards love
§
Striking and curiously rare
A beauty among the drought
Providence placed you there
A hope among the doubt
A succulent in an espresso cup…
The Starling
I walked along a quiet cypress grove
Lining a cool clear creek
And there I heard a muddled call
I looked and found a Starling there
Struggling in the roots, with an injured wing
I asked the bird,
“From where have you flown? And what has broken you so?”
The bird replied,
“I have flown from your heart and was broken by your desire.”
When I Saw a Speck of Brown in Your Blue Eyes
I traveled troubled miles
To stand on your shore
And take in, through my aching heart,
Your endless blue, stirring depths
To scan the white sky
Across and down
To where it meets your conflicting tides
I gained and lost the breath of your wild air
As I caught among your blue and dark whirls
A small speck
A distant island
Of brown sand
My soul longed and leapt
And leaned forward to say,
“I want to live there”
§
Heart blush
Blood rush
Mind mush
Soul crush
§
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
~EMILY DICKINSON