Canopy

Follow me into this
Silver linden canopy
We'll lie on our backs looking up
Centenarian boughs braiding their own sky
Green leaf stars
Cosmic comets trailing
As we touch, synchronous creation
Of a new celestial story
Bound, terrestrial, in the ancient roots
Of this soft soil foundation.

-GSS 2012

Constellations

We scratched our names in the sky
Etched our hands in the grass
Dry under the moonless night
Your tongue warm and wet
My eyes straining to see yours -
Crystal points reflecting light,
My dark shadowed mouth seeking
Your silent acquiescence

How did we find each other there
In the field across the road
After dark on a Tuesday
Under all those stars?

We never found the North Star
But it shined down all the same
Orion and The Pleiades
Shimmering ancient beacons
Leading us to one another,
Though I would have found you
Even in the pitchest black.


-GSS 2012

Spring Thaw

Melting snow holds tight around the trees
New green leaves shaking lightly
As sun shaft shadows scatter light
Spindly thawing twigs break at right angles
Encountered by unnatural intrusion
Dusty iron grills filled with old char dry and crack
Empty picnic tables expand again, at last
Wood grains releasing moisture into air

When the silence is complete and I am whole
The noise of the falling river will lift me
Out of this darkness punctuated by
Ice breaking into shards
Pine needles will stick to my hands,
Sand grinding into my teeth and
This need for sharing will drown

I could die here, easily, disappear into earth
Blend back into the dust of last winter
My solid and un-weathered parts
Glinting back out through the sun
But I will choose to go on,
To find night amid the mountains
Eat a small dinner for one,
Sleep, dream and breathe you,
Then begin again.

-GSS 2012