Spilled Ink

With a quietness quite unlike my own
I watched the wings dip in and out of gold.
I wondered if you'd find it fascinating.

Moving to touch you with the question,
it surprised me to find I was somewhere else.

Leaning back to the window I noticed
the clouds laying about, inviting me
to step out in the air, stroll a bit,
drift if you will.

Seemed odd I'd never considered
how easy it might be to walk about them.
Stranger still, how peaceful I'd become
next to you; pondering gold colored wings
and walking about clouds.

I wondered if you'd find it fascinating
the way the colors flashed, turning gold into grey,
slicing through with shades pink and purple.

I wondered about the colors you saw
laid against a desert with smoky skies
and somehow drifted to sleep.

I woke to the color of spilled ink,
reaching to touch you with the question
only to remember I was still, somewhere else.

Lightning Colored Pools

I felt a drop or two after the lightning flashed
near the girl swimming after dark.
I wondered, for a minute, if she knew the odds,
if she was old enough for odds, and if her parents
worried about her swimming in pools where
lightning may strike.

The thoughts were breezy at best,
like the palm trees I'd not seen since
I was that girl, swaying in the breeze
chasing lightning colored pools and dreams
of a lifetime ago.

The rain seemed a bit hesitant and briefly
I thought it was doing so to remind me that
one does not have to pour to make a point
when rumbling and flashes were along for the ride.

It all made the quiet a bit more precious
and the dark a lot less so. The girl didn't stay long
having decided the work done to prepare
for her midnight dip was for naught with rain drops
that couldn't decide to come or go and rumbling
that sounded far too much like her father to ignore.

I could see the bar and thought of wine before
I remembered I had given it up in favor of being awake
and feeling drops that fell into lightning colored pools
and swaying palms that I hadn't seen since
I was that girl swaying in the breeze.

Surrender

I wondered if he knew I loved rocks.
The ones set perfectly about the windowsill
reminding me of trips with my mother,
digging with my grandson, and the occasional
trip to the beach back when my yard
contained only a cat and a machine mowed my lawn
those, they'd long since been scattered to the floor
by dogs hopping about to see what strange person
might have the idea that visitors were welcome.

It couldn't be those rocks, each with a memory of their own,
carted around for six to ten years holding onto a simpler life,
if I were prone to lies. Those were laying about the floor,
under the windowsill where I carefully arranged them
to signify order in an otherwise disorderly world.
It couldn't be those rocks, no one saw them anymore.

Still, something told him told him I'd love the feel of a rock
hand picked by him. Turned over, examined, caressed,
likely passed over by thousands only to land somehow,
in his hands.

The same kind of something that told him I'd agree
with the word he chose after a three day debate
on what fit this peace that seemed to leak into every
conversation and slight touch. I certainly couldn't name it.
Not with my penchant, rather tightly held belief, that peace
existed only in beings wrapped in a hide.

So tightly held, this lover of words found nothing
better than resignation of the 14th century definition.
Surrender he declared. Not to you, not to me, to it.
Later came secure, contented, optimistic, even layered.

Much like the first rock with it's white strip somewhere
between halfway and the end. As if  the two rocks
had met one day and melded to form a new one
in between themselves.

I held it today, set it on my desk and tried
not touching the significance I gave this rock that
came from some field that I'd never so much
as walked through. Picked up by hands
I'd not held quite yet and delivered to me
quite casually, leaving me with
little in the way of verse.