No Rhyming

In an evening let me make you
feel something new, something different and unexplainable...time to a toddler.

let me touch you, breach you
 in an evening teach you.

In an evening let me make you
find a new color, a new song so that you can sing alone in a car when you decide to finally go home.

let me clutch you, clench you,
in an evening wrench you.

In a morning let me wake you
feel something familiar, something comforting and close...pillow near and blanket warm.

let me sooth you, seize you,
in a morning please you.

In a morning let me find you,
find your favorite motion, your perfect alignment...pillow muffled, sheets on the floor.

let me exhaust you, no cost to you,
in a morning accost you.

In a day let me find you
remembering a morning or an evening tide

Let me catch you, distract you
let me tattoo you.

In a day let me remind you
a bit of a grin with a guilt of sin

let me hold your hand like in a prayer
but let us find altogether rare.

A moment.  a memory. 

A noon, and a night.  a flood, a drip...a memory slipped.  An imprint...fulfillment.

What we bring together.
When together.

Those Times

He remembered glancing at his watch, thinking himself rude.  What he couldn't explain is that he wasn't in a hurry...rather he wanted to remember this moment, this hour and minute, like some string of lucky numbers...fortune cookie numbers...that found him with her at this exact moment.  In time.

He could remember the first time he saw her...the glance...askew.  He was driving down the street in a nearby neighborhood, slow and summery...a lazy hot afternoon...she had pulled a chair out onto her small front porch...incongruous with its presence, like her front lawn had suddenly transformed into a pool...anyways she was there with big dark sunglasses on...Jackie Onassis-sized...like a 50's starlet...casually relaxing in her front yard.  He looked at the dashboard and it said it was 12:11 in the afternoon.  Her street ended in a cul-de-sac so he made the slow looping turn to head back towards the entrance...she was now outside the passenger side window and he remembers her regarding him as he passed, her head slightly tracking his approach and the barely perceptible turn of her as he proceeded by...like the small barely tracking adjustment of a periscope...she regarded him.  In time.

There were neighborhood parties from time to time...the spill of children across lawns and the curbs, the neighbors moving freely from house to house...the driveways were where most of the cooking was happening, bar-bbq, steaks and hot dogs...men gathering like a perfect movie-set.  He was new, and had been a bit extravagant...while the festivities were supposed to start at five pm he was ready at 4....glancing out his window to see if the party had started yet.

Finally at 5:05pm he went out, a clutch of steaks still in butcher paper in his hands...some newspaper wrapped flowers and a good bottle of bourbon finishing his load.  It was still humid out but he wore jeans...first impressions and all.  He strode purposefully, past a myriad of driveways until he was near where he thought she might be.  Some man was in the driveway, starting up charcoal and talking with a clutch of other guys and he barely glanced at him.  He kept walking, thinking maybe he had misjudged his geography. 

She came out as he was looking down the street, wondering if he had wandered too far...he felt like she might have been staring but that was just mostly a hope that he had.  Instead she was taking something out to the man in the driveway...it looked like a lighter and he turned towards her.  She was walking back in the house, no sunglasses on...and she stopped.

Well hello she said, walking towards him.

hello he said, arms full of bourbon and flowers and steak.  He couldn't extend his hand so he sort of shrugged in greeting, feeling like an idiot.

Are you new here?  Not rude, but rather southern...hospitable.  She had a delicious low twang...not like Texas or Alabama...just what he imagined if somebody had to circle a place on a map and write Southern underneath it.

Uhm, yes...well at least to this neighborhood...but I've lived here a bit.  

She regarded him.  In time.  He felt it was a minute but mostly it was probably 9 seconds.

And flowers?

Well, he started....I wasn't sure if there was a host or hostess...you know, like a neighborhood designee...so...I sort of came prepared.

She nodded...I'll tell you what.  I'll take the flowers because I like those...why don't you come inside and you can use our fridge.  She reached out and took the clutch of flowers and turned, walking back towards her front door.  She turned back once, glancing back at him...he remembered the sun was low in the trees, and it was a gauzy light, and he could smell lighter fluid and the afternoon...but he also remembered the angle of her cheekbones...and the jean shorts she was wearing...her barefoot feet and her opal colored toes...her hair woven into a ponytail that sashayed as she walked...a tight white tee...she threw him a little smile and walked into her house, leaving the door open.

He followed.

Inside it was air-conditioned and clean...she had proceeded into the kitchen, already making noise with cupboards looking clearly for something.  He sort of paused, in the hallway...almost into the kitchen.   

She suddenly appeared, flowers in a glass crystal vase, already with water. 

It was 6:13 on the clock behind her.  Another hour to sunset.

I'm sorry I stole these from you, she nodded at the flowers, turning and putting them on her kitchen table.

Well I think they're rightfully yours...you're being quite the hostess.

Well, I appreciate it...it's always good to meet the new folks...she said folks with such a sound that he knew that it was an all encompassing term...man, woman...people. 

She gave her name, and he gave his.  He still had his hands full.

So what else have you got there?  

Well, I brought a couple of NY strips...some from that butcher in the Plains...thick cut and wet aged...and holding up the bottle I had some George T Stagg antique bourbon that I've been dying to try.   Just needed the right occasion.  The right time.

For the first time she really turned to him, facing him.  Her arms were across her chest...her nose pink with sunburn.  She had the makings of a model's face with just a hint of make up...she was confident but she downplayed herself...she was a mom and a neighbor.  But in that bit of seconds she was all woman.  At least that was what was blaring in his mind.

Finally she nodded.  She reached out and took the butcher wrapped steaks.  Let me put these in the fridge and let's agree to have the bourbon later.  She put the steaks away and then said I gotta go check on some things.  He looked at her absent portion in the kitchen...it was almost 6:20pm

And still almost an hour to sunset.

Over the course of the next few hours the sun set and the coals were lit...more people came out and soon they were just shadows and conversations...he talked to few of the men, mostly about work and sports...he played soccer with one of the teenage girls just passing the ball back and forth.  He remembered once looking up and she was on her porch...he couldn't see her clearly, the evening cloaking everybody like kids on a dance floor, hidden by lights, but he thought he could feel her.  Feel her watching.  In time.

He never knew what happened to the steaks, rather gorging himself on hamburgers and hotdogs...but as the kids started to dissipate, due to the later hour, he noticed the crowd thinning....the orange glow still emitting from the grills on driveways...but now it was little huddles of people.  Folks, as she might have called them.

It was 1030pm...the evening pretty much spent.  The music had been turned down...couples were returning to their homes, shouting goodbyes over their shoulders.  He felt like he did in the very beginning, very much apart.

I think it's time we opened up your bourbon.  He heard her voice, saw her white tee shirt...couldn't see her eyes or her opal colored toes.  He thought he could detect a lotion, like a lavender but he didn't know for sure. 

Sure...yeah I could have one before going.

Well good...so here you go.  She thrust a glass at him, two fingers of a pour in a heavy crystal glass.  Neat.  I figured somebody with that type of bottle probably drank it without any ice...she swirled her own glass, clunky with ice.  I'm sorry, I have to mix mine with ice.

He nodded...no worries...and thank you for the drink.  He held his glass out to her...she paused, kind of looked around and touched hers barely to his.  cheers, she said.

He heard her name being called and she turned slightly towards it.  I have to go now, she said. 

I know....he downed the liquor in a single gulp, the gorgeous nectar burning its way down his throat, the way the sun had burnt through the afternoon, the way her voice burnt the air between them...he finished it and handed her the glass, again thanking her and turned back towards his own beckoning home.

He looked at his watch.  It was 1040pm. 

Unadorned

The landscape was white, the sheets and pillows unadorned and simple in their whiteness...the slopes were the slight hills of their bodies beneath...slight movement...the slow awakening in a morning.

They awoke.

She was almost child-like in appearance, no make up, hair askew...her eyes were wide and her laugh was amazingly familiar....he heard it fade as she went into the bathroom to catch herself in the mirror...he heard her make some noise about her hair and fussing a little...he looked in and she was sweeping it up over her head and cascading it into a high ponytail.

Landscapes look different in seasons...a farmer's furrowed field, dark and rich in spring is clearly exceedingly different under the weight of a snowstorm.

 In the evening a moon in summer cuts through the dark and finds shadows...where a moon over snow creates a white-out effect. 

A child's chalk colored sidewalk reverts to plain limestone when scrubbed free from a storm.

Graffiti artists take their art and imprint the infrastructure...decorating overpasses and subway trains...

Thunder clouds gray out the blues of the horizon, sheets of rain dull and blur the colors, the shapes beneath...

A sunset is usually the very last amazing kaleidoscope of colors before blackness smears everything away.

Certain things are beautiful adorned...rarer are the things that are beautiful unadorned.

She fell into both categories.

A naturalness that came easy...a landscape worth mapping...a new continent worth the dangers of exploring....setting out to sea in a general direction, unknowing the tides but staying fixed on one star.

A sun.

Worth waking to.

Worth waking with.

Blinding, incandescent.  Burning warm and bright.

And then descending...

worth drifting with...worth drifting off with...on a vast unknown sea, unadorned by stars...

Just to rise and begin again.

Once again.

Car Rides

There were two quite similar but also quite different emotions when crossing the James River on the ferry...it just depended on whether or not he was coming to see her or leaving her behind.

The arrival sentiment was anticipation...a pent up amount of eager, almost teenage-like compulsion...a fondness of past encounters that only grew greater with time, and an almost complete obliteration of focus or fondness for anything other than her.

He didn't like the departure emotion so he tucked that away in his mind like a worn piece of luggage.

Crossing in the ferry had a seasonal component...in the winter the river was brown and black in certain areas, the wind sliding across the deck and the waves a little choppier...he was content to stay in his car, engine running, heat on, listening to music.

But in the summer, when the river was green beneath a sky of high clouds and light winds he would always stay outside, arms on the rails of the ferry, watching the other side come closer and closer.  The scent of seas and waters mixed with salt carried across the deck, a few sea gulls daring to come near and the churn of the powerful engines beneath him added to the senses and marked his arrival in this place.  Her place...her home.

These flat farm lands...these long rows of furrowed fields that surrounded the river as it twisted and turned its way up to Richmond from the Atlantic.  These deep fields of history, where colonies and plantations chronicled the past...and the people were conditioned to be southern, hospitable, genteel...strong willed and comfortable in their position...families tightly intertwined and while hers had been polite to him he knew it was a work in progress every time he drove up to the house.

Which was why usually he sauntered up the steps, knocked on the heavy old door and waited on the porch.  He rarely entered...not because he wasn't invited but usually because they were going to soon depart and take a drive down one of the old highways. 

He'd certainly been invited the very first time he made the trek, and he had brought some wine and bourbon and some flowers for her mother...there were about 25 people in the crowded house, mostly her siblings and their children and some long-time family friends...he was a bit over-dressed but first impressions you know...

He had a chance to sit next to her briefly, a quick appetizer session at the dining room table, and their fingers interlocked underneath it, out of view...her hand was warm and he knew she had lotion on it because when he let go and brought it up near his plate he could smell it.  Her.

But usually he allowed her to answer the door and pull it shut behind her, leading him back out to the car.

His old 1972 Impala convertible...a land boat, once blue but painted red for some random reason long ago...it had bench seats in the front and back...a rarity these days...it allowed her to slide all the way against him, his left hand on the wheel, his right arm around her.  The only downside was the radio was original, and he had added after-market speakers in the footwells...it could get loud but tinny.  But they didn't care.

Rear wheel drive and he would floor it on the dirt driveway, leaving a trail of disapproving dust in its wake...he imagined her family watching her disappear down the road in a veil of light brown clouds as the vehicle churned up the ground as they hurtled down the lane.

He forgot a lot of the songs but he remembered the way he felt...in the warm summer afternoons they would put down the top and her hair billowed all around them...oftentimes she would wrap it into a ponytail, wiping away some of the bits of her bangs that fell...the car rambling along Highway 31 back towards the ferry that would return him and then turn left or right so they could watch the river.

They talked beneath the trees, the radio slight in the background...occasionally laying down in the front seat to get closer, in the shade with just a few souls around them...their world was layered beneath tree limbs and cicadas...the hum of a few passing ferries and the salt from the sea.  It was in her pink cheeks, glazed by the sun, her hair a little curly from the ride in the convertible.  She smelled clean, like linen, freshly laundered and dried in the sun.

The drive back to her mother's house was always in the twilight, driving straight into the sun as highway 616 turned into 615, and they always tried to guess if they could beat the sun slipping past the horizon as they pulled in.

A quick slide over to his side of the seat, a warm kiss on his mouth and then she would slide back and open the passenger side door.  She never looked back in these departures...he wondered why. 

The car was never turned off; he pulled the lever into reverse and slowly turned away from the house, no billowing smoke or dust.  Rather a terrifically somber drive in his mind.

On the ferry he was usually one of the last of the scarce cars to join...the mood deflated.  It was just so different returning from her...he felt scooped out...haggard.  Windblown and disjointed.  Mostly it was just an absence...like a moon-less night.  No direction to gaze at, nothing worth regarding.

He was exactly the same as when he had crossed over the river, but now he was just a shell.

He reached the other side, disembarked and began the slow dark ride home.  At a stop sign he raised the convertible's top, the last scent of salt air disappearing as he latched the top closed.

It was full dark now and he didn't even know what day it was.

Oregon Coastal Rainforest

The rain was steady...a comforting soothing sound like far-off music, drowning out perfect silence but not loud enough to disturb the peace.

In her mother's house she listened as the rain descended on the roof, the color outside her window a black that could only be seen if far from city lights. 

And city sounds.  Just weeks ago he had called from the static noise of New York...another business trip, another city in a rain.  The conversation was short...he didn't want to disturb her while back at home...but his voice was strained. 

The distance was beginning to descend...causing cracks and fissures.  She remembered the sirens in the background, the pulse of a city pumping through the phone, horns and the sounds of strangers as he walked the street.  She could barely hear him and said so...it frustrated him and they hung up the phone with him in his noise and her in the quiet.

She remembered a field trip she had taken, one time in middle school...young enough to be excited about something new...and the bus had lumbered its way into the mountains surrounding the Shenandoah...as they ascended on switch-back roads the clouds came alongside the road and when the bus finally started the visibility was cut to feet...and they piled out into small groups in the parking lot, surrounded by the trees and unable to see much of anything.  She remembered she had her camera, and had drifted off to the side away from the group...wanting to capture a photo of the forest, free without a bunch of other kids in view. 

It had started to rain, and the noise of rain in the forest was new for her...the water on the leaves, not all hitting the ground, but rather hitting the branches and the trees...it was the most peaceful sound she had ever heard and while she tried to take a photograph it was the noise in her ears that was captured.

She heard a teacher yelling and she came out towards the buses...she was late in returning and all the others were already onboard...she took a seat in the back, hearing the rain on the tin roof of the bus.

It sounded nothing like the rain in the forest.


As she now sat on the bed in her mother's house the rain sounded like that bus ride rain...she pulled off her socks and smirked...he had purchased them for her before Christmas.  A small and innocuous gesture, the least romantic type of gift but he had always commented whenever she pulled hers off...usually before peeling off her clothes in a ritual movement that sometimes included him.  And his.

But her mother's house was far away, and so was he.  She laid back on the bed, the rain still steady...wondering if he was in the air or on the ground. 

She remembered the last time he was beside her.

She remembered the last time he was inside her.

Both were in a room that was not in her mother's house...rather a neutral place.  Not a home, not an island, but a place where the worlds could intersect.

She remembered the breadth of the bed, the cool collection of the sheets and the proximity...the somewhat interesting dichotomy of the sweat of the brows and the cooler air outside.  It had been extraordinarily quiet...almost too quiet.

Except the breathing.  The inhalation and exhalation...the sensation of a body recovering from exertion...a delightful and delicious sensation but it was very quiet otherwise.

She remembered he had flipped open his phone and pushed a few buttons...a beautiful sound of rain emitted...a very long ago noise that she had burrowed into her brain and it burst open in a memory that was so different from her bus-ride rain.

She had asked him what he was playing on the phone, what app, what website, what music source.

When he replied it was the exact same place that she had remembered...and this time she had pulled the covers up and burrowed into him.

She thought about that, laying on the bed in her mother's home, the rain sounds a bus-ride rain again.