How would you know if the touch of the world was in your hand?

[michaelboy]

So often, I took for given, the comfort and safety of my dad snoring at 4:30am or even the scent and sound of hot soapy Tide-water churning in the wringer washer. They didn't seem so important then -- simply part of an every day everyday.


It wasn't really the snoring or the washer -- rather it is why they were there that substantially defined their value.

Sometimes when I get caught up in my own selfishness, I begin to miss those things immensely but then realize that the prints, scents and voices of others today may ultimately echo around my head in quite the same fashion. It's just hard sometimes "to tell a green field from a cold steel rail*" but I sure am trying.

* * *

The Coming Winter

Cold powder blowing desire into
coarse folds of red-black wool
and onto wisps of careless hair.
Here, to find a harbor of immolation where hope is made gentle at the nape
(desirous, worthy, tangible)
and destines to languish on cinnamon skin where once was dreamed, but neither knew

* * *

*

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[keplers_angels]

This attaches to so many little bits for me. Like so many and I don't want to write a whole book but... just the way it triggers so many small memories and reactions... itself seems to exemplify the message of knowing what is real when it's right in front of you.

A friend, who was my very first boyfriend, went missing and was later found dead at just this time of year 9 or 10 years back. Wish you were Here was a song I always always associated with him. A song that has always made me pause whatever else is happening in my head and stop and remember him, or before he died, to remember and wonder what he might be up to.

[michaelboy]

Thank you for this comment. You do understand.

My first wife's (who passed several years ago) first boyfriend was a severe alcoholic veteran who suffered from PTSD. She was only 18 when he threatened to kill himself if she left him. She walked out of their little camper trailer and right then put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. She lived with that trauma and undeserved guilt for years after that single incident.