echo for the hills

here is an echo for the hills
past the walls where you may be;
over your eaves and windowsills
borne through the air by love, to you from me

soft as a whisper from the stars
down from the heavens to your eyes;
glorious colors in strokes and bars
borne on the wind, as fast as my love flies

here is a murmur and a sigh
sent from the heart within my heart;
nestled within a lullaby
echoing through the hills of worlds

apart

… has everything.

the smell of popcorn riding
in a shopping cart anticipating
the wish book catalog shopping
for tools with my dad searching
for appliances for my first apartment wanting
so badly a pup tent buying
a belt in a largely empty store waiting
in the automotive area remembering
the suburban luxuries of a simple
lifetime knowing the transience of
softer sides and why do people hate
jingles they make me smile

{ components }

There is a woman who works
  an unimaginable day in
  Shenzhen. She makes sure
  certain components meet
  specific standards before
  moving them down the line.

Her hands have touched millions of
  individual inspection items,
  including the two over which
  a college student in
  Columbia, South Carolina
  lets her mother know via text that
  she won’t be coming home for
  the summer.

Her mother, who lives in
  Bradley, Wisconsin,
  is watching “This Is Us” on
  an Apple TV device that also contains
  components the Shenzhen woman inspected.

And she looks sadly over at
  an old red lion marionette that
  her late husband bought her daughter years ago,
  and wonders if that daughter will ever care
  about these little things anymore;
  this puppet made twenty years ago,

  another one of the components of life that
  we choose to either push on down the line

  or

  reject,

How To Face

I saw her periodically,
But dreamed about her often;
In fantasies, I’d see her change,
Her yielding face to soften —

But this was all imagining.
She was no way attracted —
And all that I could really do’s
Control the way I acted.

It was a kind of walking shame,
One she had not invited,
But such is how our hearts are built,
To be in this way blighted,

Unfair and asymmetrical:
Attraction and affection —
And boys need one skill badly, that’s
In how to face

Rejection

Plain

You’ve always seen yourself as plain,
Yet I see beauty to reveal:
Not flaws, but marks that show a life
And all you’ve felt, or yet may feel,

For what is obvious to me
Of you in whole, and in each part,
Is the plain gold that is your worth
And that great glory that is your

Lost

 
Heart

now shadows stretch across the road

now shadows stretch across the road
and evening beckons wide;
i'm left to ponder my estate -
my blindness, and my pride -

for though life hands us many things
with rich'ning worth imbued,
there's very little we can't mar
with our

ingratitude

Where My Money Went

For more years than I’d like to tell
I threw coins in each wishing well
I happened on; e’er with the view
Of wishing I could be with you

In dreams, I had you at my side,
And left a fortune scattered wide,
To feed the hope I’d one day see
That you could love someone
Like me

 

(“Where My Money Went” – 3-7-2014)