Category Archives: romance

Traveling Grace

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If you were to ask me where and when love was born,
whether on a sunny afternoon under a shade tree
in the corner of a familiar room,
or under the eaves of a shelter during pouring rain,

I could not know which place to say.

Though equally the place would not have mattered
as much as the work to consumate the creation,

-how it got there-

and the time it took for every nuanced surface and texture
to be smoothed or grooved by wind and weather;
of touches and locked gazes
focused on the horizon,

a slow exhalation of breath
prepared for that exact moment.

Respite

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In a break from the contra danse,
when the light is new,
at its beginning, just strewn
in times of ephemeral appearance.

And the poet steps aside
to examine the heart
amid blind stops and starts,
focused with pinpoint precision.

Look away from the morning’s
unrhythmical phrase
in the opposite sky, anticrepuscular rays,
remind one of beauty’s emergence.

And the face is of love,
the blocked sounds reappear,
in an eye-blink, a mere
reminder of the dance’s convention.

think diamond

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is passion
jagged and obtuse,
or egg-shaped and small?

many thousands will think
and ask together.

we have a frantic need to know this.
while existing in burning air and suffocating space
spalling red blood tears
between each moment of sweetness
bits and pieces starting as wax, not honey.

it does not pour or flow,
rather builds and solidifies as stone
clashing with the surrounding sediment
to sharpened edges:

a gem that scars and heals.

that’s what love never tells you.

Oeuvre

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Characters written in fresh milk
on paper
– when her heart
was full of longing,

Did she divine this as a song
in a pentatonic key?

Elevating her joy to ignition by dusting
her soul with gunpowder,
then showered down from the sparks
to low crackles and hums.

Guiding the hands of one
to accompany her riff
on Summertime, she

adorned her melody
with a solid chord structure
and a bounding rhythm.

It was sincere.
It was breathtaking.
It was…

icicle lights

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I see glittering in the eyes
when she does something thoughtful

A gesture that passes between souls
-Unspoken-

or when she says a kind word,
and the light shimmers

chasing other photons down the string
passing through junctures,

and out into air
as new growth.

I see a flickering nimbus
in the darkness,

as I pause to blink,

then hope
that the reflection is undimmed
when I turn to face her smile.

Why Rise?

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Daybreak,
crawls in brightness,
stirs living stones with breath
and curls inside the void and forms
a thought.

Wakened
sunlit spirits
coax and spy a wry grin
in your smile, time to linger in
rising.

Leaving
shades that night showed
facing, not turning back,
just as the music builds, entwines
then rests

as one.
Did we lie down
because of shadows dim
or body aches from tiresome whims
of day?

Softened
whispers in streams
of touches, parting rays
just risen, and no recourse but
to stay.

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A blogging acquaintance challenged her readers to write a cinquain. A cinquain is a structured poem consisting of a least 5 lines with 2, 4, 6, 8 and 2 syllables, respectively. The above is inspired by John Donne’s “Break of Day” and is actually a crown cinquain, a collection of 5 cinquains to function as a larger poem. I hope you enjoy.