Poems

Rain thrums down on hibiscus and plumeria
Pelts the plantation cottage tin roof
Plips and plops on patio stones
Washes out other sounds
As evening's interim role begins
In the play of night and day
Too early for candle light
Too dark to read on the porch
Now a gentle patter defeats
Rhetorical possibility
With its quiet simplicity
Gray clouds disappear
In unshadowed dark

Flurries scurry
desperately on a faint breeze
caught between
gravity's certainty
and the assured dissolution
of inhospitable warm ground

Into the black pond
Water falls in white bursts
Framed by rainbow mists
Rushes down the valley
Meanders green meadows
Merges with rumbling surf

The cat does not like
To spend the night alone,
Preferring instead to create
a cat bed by leaning into
my bent legs at the back of the knee.

We sleep together this way
Most nights, and have done so
These past five years since
Being cast from the family home.
Two vagrants, comrades by necessity

However
We do not always sleep together
We do not always sleep alone
Occasionally we have a guest
And the cat finds himself
With new sleeping arrangements

And occasionally I sleep
Somewhere else, and he is left to
His own devices. He is lonely, having gotten used
To my warmth, the white noise of my snoring
He doesn't understand my need for others

He thinks all we need is each other
It's a perfect life as long as I'm home
Each night. But I long for something else
I want to nest in someone's bends
The same way he nests in mine.

I dreamed of an endless ocean
viewed from the edge
of a river's delta
emptying out to the sea
in an unlikely waterfall:
cascades of deep green blue,
gulls and eagles circling
above the tide.
I was looking out a window
of a house built at that edge
which was only mine temporarily
due to luck, good fortune.
I gave it to another family
to live in for as long as I would
have it: three weeks.

I ran into that family
at the grocery store the other day,
marveled at their
harmony, husband, wife,
two kids noisy and rambunctious,
a family at peace,
rolling their cart around the store
in a dreamy daze, enjoying
the time together.
So different than I see myself
in my harried shopping visits
with my one kid zipping
away from me to look at things,
trying to climb into the cart,
asking for candy, candy.

In the dream I gave them
the house I'd lucked into
because I thought they deserved it.
The man got out his guitar
and sang a song he'd just written
in appreciation of this gift,
like a love song, but clumsy
because he was trying
not to make it sound
like a love song. It was imperfect,
but charming in its imperfection,
like they are.

Just before I woke
I was telling the wife:
this is a gift,
enjoy it, take ridiculously
long baths, stare at the sea,
eat your dinners near the great windows.
It will be like
dreaming.