The Kairotic Word

I don’t sense you as
wind through treetops or the brush
of a rushed stranger

in a humming crowd.
I feel you like warm coals when
the fire’s blown out:

smoke that fills my nose,
heat under my fingernails,
ash I won’t dust off.

You echo inside
me, your touch imprinting and
repeating. I love.

Night breezes flow down
my balcony, and I stand,
airing out my mind.

Not even the gods
can call the breeze back after
it has blown, and air-

ruffled sand won’t hold
its form in the face of wind.
When blown, forms scatter…

I can only guess
how scattered our form will be
when daylight casts it.

I stand now, wishing
for calmer breeze and wondering
what air’s bringing you.

i didn’t know that
march could hijack november,
bringing new buds from

firm branches flush with
orange leaves. yet here i am
hugging the chaos

of spring-fall colors
and unexpected blossoms.
i see this tree bow

to a cool wind but
hold its buds close, as if all
clocks were rigged for spring’s

return. these will grow.

it’s taking about
all i’ve got not to bother
you while you’re sleeping

but i imagine
when you wake inside your dreams
i’m there beside you,

and i’m much braver.
you roll over to look at
me, and your smile’s like

honey on my tongue,
light sweetness born of flowers
and sunshine. you smell

like ocean and taste
of peaches — warm, soft peaches
sprinkled with allspice.

i’m not so brave while
you’re asleep and afar, but
i can dream you close,

and i do.

I’m watching Wall Street
open in the morning — floor
humming excitement,

brokers clanging bells.
On my internal exchange
your bell tolls now;

I see your options
post on the billboard and
your stock dribble south.

A little early
for limp beginnings, and you
won’t rally later.

I think it’s cute how
the loan vendor writes my name,
Social, vital stats.

But the minute I
turn my back she racks up twelve
reasons to decline.

As for you, who turned
your back, should I not decline
you? You’re insolvent,

a risk to me, and
a tall karmic expense. I
can’t afford you now

and won’t buy you on
credit assuming I’ll pay
back in samsara.

Truth is, I’m amazed…

amazed how smoothly
you duck existing charges
and then spend some more

as if bills never
come to your door. How in hell
do your checks not bounce?

I just can’t work it
out; your numbers don’t tally.
You’re a boiler room

scam, a perfectly
scripted blend of charm, greed, and
golden promises.

You kill me. Declined.

A white moon-disc that
hangs between lightning and clouds
lights your sky, and mine.

My scene is framed by
tall pecans, legacy of
migrant farmers who

dug their plows into
red mesas and left behind
a desert city.

Perhaps you stand on
your fresh-cut lawn tonight, full
moon above you; or

you sleep and dream of
the past you’d rather forget
but expose to me.

I have scars you can’t
see now, tiger-stripe scars I
touch when I’m alone,

while remembering
what compost made me grow, what
troubles brought me life.

I love your freedom
and I love this open sky
covering us both:

me as I watch a
shared moon through the trees, and you
asleep at midnight.

You’ve remembered me,
captured and time-frozen in
a pristine picture,

a postcard from your
life that pulls me in and yet
distances. How sweet

I am, how carefree
in your memory: no needs, no
demands, just a zest

for the moment and
you. The image shows me with
you, seated, laughing,

eyes twinkling, mischief-
laden, and glad to bear our
burden. I was fresh

while the camera of
your memory took my picture.
The shot reminds me:

never abandon
the freedom of abandon.
I promise to leap,

to release myself
in delicious free fall — held
by air, kissed by earth.

Partly cloudy with isolated thunderstorms. High 96F. Winds SW at 15 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.

The pressure falls, winds
kick up dust, and I escape
to a lettered cove:

art, theology,
science, politics, and the
safety of fables.

Discontent hovers
outside this cove, while humid
clouds, low and squatting,

brew up lightning, and
lightning strikes trees. I sense times
that I’ve been a tree,

struck without warning,
left burned and peeling in rain.
I’ve been lightning too,

forming silently,
striking without thought or care,
then dissipating.

Both tree and lightning;
bystander, actor; caught up,
yet free-willed; I am

the conflict of fronts,
inherently unstable
and true to nature.

I felt free that day;
wasn’t watching for you, but
you said you watched me

enter a chilly
conference room and slide into
the empty back row.

Do I believe you?
I don’t know, but it makes us
a sexy story,

the kind that I will
tell myself in another
world, and smile over.

You’re a phantom now,
caught up in the secure life
you built on your own,

and I can feel my
world squeezing you out. It’s like
an incoming tide

— or an encroaching
eclipse. I won’t resist it.
I won’t resist it.

It’s mesmerizing
in its way, how our two lives
swallow up memory,

wash over smell, taste,
sink them to the sandy bed,
flow in, and flow out.

And if I block out
the taste of pomegranate
and that foreign scent —

foreign to me — I
will forget that once upon
a time, you were real.

I can’t tell you what
happens to the shore when the
tide returns to sea,

or how bright the light
will seem after the eclipse.
I only know the

cycles of my world,
orbits and shadows beneath
a steady lit sky,

always enough sight
to see a phantom by, and
sense enough to touch.

It came unsummoned:
a third tongue flowing easy
from cribbed school Spanish

and an open heart.
It was funny how I’d thought
I’d forgotten all,

and yet the tenses
submitted to me in an
unconscious grammar.

“…Llámame cuando
puedas…” I didn’t expect
to redeem that tongue,

but here I am, with
linguist’s mind awake and walls
crumbling underhand.

The true Rosetta
Stone is neither black tablet
nor graphic software;

communion with all
unveils the old-new One and
destroys our Babel.