Turkey and Gibberish

We're all quite comfortable
with nonsense that sounds good
the please and thank you clatter
of a turkey dinner table
that revolving mess
of grudges given up
animosities suspended
but only briefly
only as long as there is more
to pass clockwise and counter
to consume without reason
until the very marrow
is swallowed down

Chasing Waterfalls

It's a tragedy of reality
that we often must turn back
with the goal in sight
with vision
of where we want to be

We divine safety
holding a snake before us
its forked tongue
whispering the wisdom
of a mortal coil

To know what we know
and still proceed
foolishness
to proceed into the unknown
divine

It's not a miracle we needed

We were alone together

not physically removed

from the atom smashing exchange

of your hand in my hand

the sound of your heart in my head

not physically removed

by more than a hand-print

by edges uniquely ours

It was the last time

we'd walk like that

the last time I'd see you

with that half-smile

aimed somewhere in the distance

some distance where half-happy

was better than this

this composite creature us

It's not one of those things

I look forward to remembering

but all the same

I find myself half-smiling

at the palm of my hand

find your half-smile

in one of its lines

and make half-smiles whole

Dead Letters

She sends me postcards
from far away places
the kind you find in shops
where tourists scratch their kitsch
the kind we used to talk about
owning some day

The first was from
The World's End
and she left it blank
like that was all there was to say
like five years
could so easily disappear

The second was remarkable
only in that she managed
to write: Hi
on the other side
of a mountain
deemed impossible to climb

There was a third
and a fourth
of the ocean and the sky
with the sort of blue that feels
like it will stretch out
somewhere past infinity

This last was of a tree
completely unremarkable
save the fact
a photographer deemed otherwise
save the way
it clung so strongly to the earth

She sends me postcards
from far away places
the kind you find in shops
where history goes to die
the kind we tried to curate
till the future found us out