Poetry

To the Subway stranger:

I miss they way

Our eyes

Used to catch

For just 

One second 

Across the car

Packed or empty

Lost in our own

headphoned quiet.

Or maybe

We had both 

Just glanced up

From the pages 

Of another world 

Drawn by the noise

Of “it’s showtime.”

Or a couple

Obvious in their ardor

Sat down just

Next to you

Or

College kids

Loud and carefree

And brazen

In their cloaks

Of liquor 

Swing wantonly 

Between us

A glance

A smirk

Beneath hat and scarf

Or

Glazed with sweat.

A skittering, shaking, jostling 

One second 

A small sliver

Of another life

Sliding

Into

Mine

I promise

Now

Not

To

Look 

Away

Too

Soon. 

What I miss the most is other people

Remember 

discussing other people’s eavesdropped lives

Like they were your own?

Remember

The feeling of sitting in a midwinter coffee shop

Watching snow fall 

Warmed by the buzz of caffeine and other people’s

 ordinary

 Conversations.

Remembering:

An ache for something in your chest

Like the burn of too much strong coffee.

Remembering:

A yearning for something 

And someones

you’d 

Never

Thought 

you’d 

Miss.

Anticipation

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow, so goes the saying,

But 

I am never patient

And

Tomorrow feels a distant shore

So far it might as well be Mars.

A Returning 

When, each spring, I dig my still winter cold fingers into the soft dark soil and

Deposit those little balls of sealed potential in their magic dens,

I am digging up myself 

As much as I am planting seeds.

We both have slumbered this past season and now

Push up through the murk and 

Tilt our tender faces toward the sun

Welcoming a returning.

The Wave

I never thought too hard

 about the curve of my waist,

Just a stop on the path of streaming line that

flows from ear to neck to shoulder to ribs to hips to knees to ankles 

A snug place for the band of my jeans

The shelf I rest my books or hands or nephews on.

But then,

You come back to bed,

Pull the covers down and slip in behind,

Your hand trails sleepy slow

up my back and over

That curve

A wave cresting the sloping shore

The sun peaking over the lip of the earth

Hand resting safe on the soft bump of my belly 

A cradle for your forearm

As you cradle me.