luna mer to shade of zaadz

there is so much bright sun.
my skin peels back and everything under it is raw.
how beautiful to be under the boughs, feeling the pulse of a simple moment sliding into the next.

i once got a postcard from you,
swimming in the warm australian waters, and you told me:
to abandon everything you know, for a while,
to find yourself.

we wrote, back and forth,
in a canopy of anonymity.
but, who needs a name when all the real treasures nest so squarely on a poem?
the conversations were private worlds crafted into eloquent riddles; images of emptied pools, shore struck ships and cafes where you sat without being seen.

i arrived at a special delight to discover your comments adeptly bearing the weights of my soul. to be met without meeting, to be known without knowing. and the dance
was a playful challenge to continue,
to write, to speak, to sing,
to show myself
over and over.
because you were there with a cigar in your mouth,
laughing
and shaking your head and sometimes,
quietly clapping.

i'm rusty now and strange to my own tangled alphabet.
in a stash of forget me nots, i found you again, smirking and running out of view.
your voice, shouting from the hidden forest, told me:
"you know you don't have to hit a home run on all those curve balls, don't you? Just tip the ball to the side into foul and you might buy yourself a bit of time."

what time have you bought and where do you wander?
and, I wonder sometimes if you found your place by the sea.
Are you the crackle of the fire, the smoke of a prayer
or the guttural joy of a garden?

a mystery like this assures me.
In things seen and unseen, is all.
Through the plagues of isolation and bereavement, the skies are still dusted with amazing light.
songs emerge and no breath goes unnoticed.
"we are spun from the stars," someone said. and, what lives inside is us as vast as infinite space.
we go on going and ride the pitches that come our way.

you tell me again, "life isn't about security, it's about what you discover,
but, remember to step back from the plate from time to time."