Long Division

We touch, we embrace, the hour late.
A simple equation: your hands plus mine.
Long division, remainder great.

Bewildered by the energy we create,
our arms around what, we can’t define.
We touch, we embrace, the hour late.

Missing pieces seek out mates.
Will we be more than parallel lines?
Long division, remainder great.

Too worn and weary to calculate.
Want to get past what is and isn’t mine.
We touch, we embrace, the hour late.

But ours is not a mathematical fate.
Our halting pace can still feel divine.
Long division, remainder great.

Your head in my lap, that welcome weight.
Hold me as my eyes start to shine.
We touch, we embrace, the hour late.
Long division, remainder great.

Two Autumn Portraits

I.

I want to ride off
into the welcoming hills,
flashing colors, leaves
like quiet fireworks
against a cement sky—-
get lost in the shadows
disappear for a time
into anonymous oblivion
answer to no one
feel my power—-
summer still in my legs
as I spin silver prayer wheels
to a hymn of wind, road
and sky.


II.

The hope of one green branch,
bent so many times,
still full of life—-
water flows and rises,
will and fire within cells.
Not brittle, leafless and dead,
a scratchy appendage,
but still supple, growing,
reaching who knows where,
leaves turned sunward--
heliotropic—-reaching
by feel, not sound or sight.