I'd like to walk with you

There are kindred souls that need no further intimacy but acceptance through a smile, a word, a touch. To friends.

I think I'd like to walk with you
over fields of granite stone
smiles

in skipping over cracks
fingers touching
keeping balance
a dance of friendship
in youth renewed

I think I'd like to walk with you
down there,
at the edge of town
twenty seven
and not a wisp of wind
large flakes parachuting,
blessing and anointing

our wishes

the snow just deep enough
to chase others to books
as we write our own

perhaps,
you'd hold my arm
perhaps,
I'd clasp your hand
we'd smile, even giggle
but not jabber as others do
for our thoughts would already be
tucked in warm entwine

the snow would give that glow
you know the one
like the moon came down
and left itself behind
it would be so so late
when this we did
and somehow
right on time

I think I'd like to walk with you
on roads of narrow nothing
warm and breezy
soft and slow
sweet wheat high

on waves of tender

you'd look that way
and I over here
as bugs that haunt
summer fields
fly and sing

to our waltz

We'd smile
so glad for the day
and time would be
the world's folly

but we'd talk very little
as a finely tuned piano
should never hide in the rush

when we'd walk
old women who never had

and never would
would," well! dear me! I've never!"
and old men
would lean on their worn tools
and smile at the thought

to know you
on snowy evenings
to smell your freshness
on summer passing
to skip on dance floor stone
I think my mind would be the richer
my thoughts the kinder
my touch more gentle

I think I'd like to walk with you..
~Rick

Feather to the gale

you, standing there on the shore
looking out to sea,
what is it that you see?

are you illuminated?
has your vision once again
become light?
can you now see through
the darkness engulfing the flame?

if feet could smile, yours would
for they've brought you home again
from such a long stray

but oh, what a feather in a gale
home is and how rarely
do feet find it

does the moon remember you?
do the waves speak as before?

what is it that you see?
show me

for once, i too found that shore,
illumination in the night,
the song upon a wave

but that was oh so very long ago
and I've forgotten the language
once native to my heart

I'd come beside you
take your hand
invade your heart
share your eyes
and weep for the witness
-but then,
you'd forget too

and though, feather to the gale
you will anyway
i long for this moment
in your flight
this respite from lost
in the flame

The Winter Raven

i might've been a songbird
cupped in morning's first light
the poetry of a chickadee
the elegance of a catbird
or maybe the joyful wren

from field to pasture
flocks of friendly sparrow
might have followed me

geese may have known rest
in my quiet pond, and the eagle
may have shared his mountain perch

but the blackbirds, they did swarm
and the crows, they did call
and here, in this late valley
of creeping dusk where all
that might have been has been forgotten

i find i have no song
and through blighted fields
it's the lazy cowbird that follows
leaving her future in others nests
and it's the felon blackbird i call
to escort me down dark alley ways

and it's here, in the tangled thicket
below the tall maple, where
the void of leaf or elegance
is swallowed in the last ray of light
drawing down the shade of hope
that i find myself silent
deep in the shadow
of the winter raven

The Danger of Her Allure

as she sleeps, i peek under her skirt



she begins to wake, shake her hair



her eye opens-and spies me



she puts on her make up
i get hard



come baby, come in.
don't mind the sentry



i lose my breath
her breasts grace the sky



she slips her stockings on



come on baby, come closer
you know you want to
want me to love you
and
i long to kiss her sweet thighs



the sky becomes her elogance
i am hypnotized
by her beauty



but i begin to feel small
insignificant
it grows dark
between her legs
but still, she beckons
blinding my fear



her legs close
her smell engulfs me
i lose my way
still
she says, come
come closer
inside me



darkness has come
i am inside of her
eaten
having eaten
and there is no
escape
her beauty
only the allusion
that broke my heart



Walking on a Cold Winter's Night

on the northern prairie
the sun settles in sublimity
a gentle mother's hush
into the blanket of winter snow

it paints the december ditch bank
where the shouldered pines gather
while careful does slide beneath
the skirts on their way to pond

over by the farm, the rooster goes still
as the last gasp of light
dims through the break in boards
while the outside wind echoes the sun's demise

over where the bare trees
mark the fence line, there is one
small and final explosion of blaze
before the stalks and branches turn shadow

on this cold winter's night
old men will peek curtains
to redless thermometers
while the chimney above billows gray

the lake will crack sharply at midnight
and the freezing maple will reply
the owls will sleep, waiting it out
while the moon grows a holy shroud

it is here, in this harshest of times
when life is at its fullest
it is here i am most alive
walking in the silent explosion
in the warmth, of a cold winter's night

The Maverick

while the apple pie bakes,
all straw hat and suspenders
the amish come together as
an army of ants, raising the barn

at tuesday night little league
i see the proud parents
all bleachered together
shoulders up and pointing

there goes the rv of relatives
headin down to the state fair
passing that bus full of seniors
off to break the casino

would you like me to say i envy
their happy smiles?
is the lie to be advocated?

truth is, i ain't much for people
and their happy birthday sing alongs
or their vociferous chants of
all for one and one for all

i'm just not cut that way

oh, i like most people just fine
one at a time and mostly over there
but handshakes and huggin
is the horse that drives me to tall timber

see, i was born out of time
this i know, and it's my sack to tote

had i been here when i should've
i'd be there! in them clouds, on that clipper,
high and alone in the crows nest
eyein for, yet daring, the stormy weather

I'd be David Thompson in the rockies
swattin bears and skeeters alone
not Jim Bridger, tellin tales to fools

I'd be the one out there, on the
edge of the herd searchin
for the stragglers
and at night, when the others slept
i'd ride into town alone
after the piano player had been shot
when the saloon turns somber

i'll share ya my beans and share ya my poke
but rarely my fire or trail
-just say howdy, and keep ridin on

i'm the ghost, waitin for a train
but only to watch it pass
and this only to remember
i was born before the railroad
and i'll never raise a barn

Another Auld Lang Syne

ran into an old friend today,
unexpected,
to be sure.

you see,
I was sure
he was long gone,
even hoped so, i guess

a dreamer,
this one,
that won’t ever
amount to nothing
cept whittlin clouds
into snowflakes.

I was out
in an old familiar
place, hummin an old
familiar tune, from
an old familiar time.


the wind was right
the season sure
the clouds asleep,
just right for dream carving.

dropped by, he did
as I was cutting wood
under these here clouds and
he winked in whisper
pockets packed
and I wiped my brow
to his knowing.

we agreed, a beer to share
on a stump carved
for ass cheeks
when January whistles boredom

God, it was good to see him,
though he’s such a fuck!
blows smoke out his ass
and calls it maple syrup!
a real piece of work,
this one.

we studied the clouds
and weighed em out
like butcher’s beef
along the ridge line
while our fingers numbed
cold to remembrance
and bitter barley brew.

we wondered
just how long those trees
have swayed
and if Yankee soldiers
ever silhouetted
the sky line
in no reason why.

I showed him the chicken coop
of simple family dreams
that were cashed in
for ten cents on the dollar

the murdered cedars
stripped bare and marched
down the hillside to a grape arbor
that never happened

and that garden
that April applauded
July killed
and August mocked

a killin field, all
in a country slum
only shangri la for
lazy coons and lost ambitions

he never asked
about the family,
mostly out of kindness
and detoured regret

instead,
we mostly reminisced.
of winters past,
summers that promised
but never were,
and autumns yet to come

and we never back slap
or laugh out loud,
but rather sideways glance
in a giving comfort.

he didn’t ask how I was
because
he knows what I am
and didn’t ask
what’s new, or hers past
knowing I never could
draw a winning hand
cept in solitaire
-and then only if I cheat.

but we did drink a beer,
pretending it was cold
and not the wind,
nor the season final
and that was enough.

we of tripped up dreams
and tangled ledger
resting upon trees in Mexico
like infertile butterflies
too vandal to fly a straight line

but a shrug, a beer
a broken ridge line
and an old friend
who couldn't spawn a maggot
on a pile of shit
cures today, hides tomorrows
and ignores a past
where I’ll pretend
not to look.

a toast then
to another year
another ten penny nail
in thread bare tires
on a beater
comin back from Cleveland

so too, then, a toast to him
and to clouds,
and to you,
and what might've been

Happy New Year

~rick