Redhead

An easy laugh turns her head,
Eyes that pale other blues -
The sea and the sky -
Spark clear and bright,
And draw me in a tender trap.

Cares brushed aside
By coppery tresses
Teased across porcelain features
By a breeze that mimics
Her delicate nature.

She is a dream,
Rare in its completeness,
And treasured for the sensations
That lighten my blues,
And brighten my days.

Waiting for You

Vivid cerulean eyes
Reveal a spirit,
A depth of soul
That compels I wait,
Propels my pen.


I would know you,
If allowed,
In the silly ways of childhood friends;
That you admire frogs and detest toads,
How many feathers you hold dear,
And why yellow makes you smile.

I would know you,
If allowed,
In the deepest ways of a confidante;
The secret fears that took years
To surface, a lifetime to reveal,
Those things that touch your soul.

I would know you,
If allowed,
In the delicate ways that in haste
Escape passionate young love;
The softness of your lips at first kiss,
The dewy sparkle of your eyes,
And that you blushed as you read these lines.

I would know you,
If allowed,
As the One would have me;
As your helper, leader, companion and mate,
As one who learned too late in life
The value of cherish,
the beauty of love.

Fauxbia

The deep and sonorous voice of
his defeatist self-talk was paternal,
and torturous,
reinforcing the force fed message,
"There is no happiness,
only gradients of misery,"
leaving him indifferent to the present,
careless of the future.

Reared in the shadows of perfection,
parental conflicts played out
as the "self-made men"
of a fathers' generation chased ambitions
beyond the cramped lives
of their own youth.

Affection and approval,
bestowed and withdrawn
by the performance scale;
he was a sundial
numbering only sunny hours,
with little of consequence to say,
a lucid, inquisitive and fertile mind.
His native endowment
a vivid sensibility for the beauty
of words.

He learned woman from
his quint-essential sisters
yet remained profoundly ignorant of women;
if love were happiness
it generated a loneliness
made all the more desperate
by the intimacy of severed connections.

Psychic numbness, and fauxbia,
yes, he feared being false,
had plunged him into darkness,
with his vision
of a minimum level of connectedness,
the raw ache of personal loss,
the empty feeling of helplessness.

Forced to live as that outsider
trapped inside a familys' feuds;
being bonded to survivors,
learning to live with the understanding
he would be jettisoned for others to survive:
emotional dishonesty became
necessary for survival.

Denial was the best defense
since he could change nothing
and repression had long since
ceased to offer relief;
he was too articulate
for that lie.

The tightly packed crowd
contained inside his head was
momentarily frozen by the question
"How to unlearn the lessons of his youth?"
To love and be loved, a necessary condition,
a prerequisite to a happiness
that could not exist?

Now, he works,
and writes,
and trusts in simple verities;
chaos, pacified by distance and routine,
serve to mitigate the sting
of realitys' reminder -
he'd found that so urgently sought,
only to have lost it in the finding.

An Old Horse

Like an ageing thoroughbred
Tests the reign, wanting more,
Wanting to run once again,
I am in envy, and in awe,
Of those I see who grasped
The mystery of life and love.

The rain on my window reveals
Vignettes of my life shining
Through a prismatic waterfall,
Ego inflating their importance
To enormous, and vital -
Though merely cozy, and small.

A life of rushing timidity;
I am fearful of seizing hold
Of a love so coveted -
A crush of conflicted absorptions,
A passing wave across the sand,
Its mystery in its simplicity.
Its mystery in its simplicity.

Her Eyes

Rolling her blue eyes against another blue,
the sea, or against the sky,
I cast my lonely thoughts into her ocean
where release, sweet release, begins to
subdue the bonfire of my soul.
The web of my cares fills with her grace,
Mysteries revealed, stretching
through time, thought and being.
If only she could touch my heart,
If only she would breathe into my soul,
her mouth next to mine,
Warming the corridors frozen by the rain,
darkened by too many sundowns alone.
Like the end of a long absence,
like a sudden bell, her glance
claws its way into my consciousness,
shattering a reverie;
A dawning of the spirit,
awakening a too-long slumbering soul.