Rosebush

The tiny apparatus beneath my tongue,
The one that forms a phrase,
and gives me strength to speak it,
Disappeared whenever I saw him.
Words – once friends, companions,
Would flee.

His face, so striking,
It rendered me speechless.
His beauty – erased every eloquent phrase
From my memory.

And it wasn’t like he was this crazybeautifulperfection,
It’s just that
He was this crazybeautifulperfection
To me.

Just a regular guy,
Unless…
You caught him looking at you
with love in his eyes,
Or captured sparkles of amusement
Which shone from their fathomless depths.

The smile,
Dear god that smile.

White and inviting,
Broad, generous,
Shining brightly,
A crescent moon formed just for me.
Waiting for a kiss.

His laughter,
I remember the laughter.
Voice soft like velvet is soft
And when he was lost in the mirth,
He was a picture
I ached to paint.

Preserve on paper,
Keep nearby
Always…
But my skills fell short,
Fall short,
Could never…
Capture
That spontaneous image.

Flaws?
Oh yes,
He had them.
But they were the sort that every rose bush has.

Thorns come with beauty, sometimes.
But I don’t know many who forbid the rose bush a home
in their garden.

And I wanted him
In mine.

The face,
The voice,
The laughter,
The heart,
The soul.
The very fragrance of him.

I wanted to wake near him,
and live near him,
And breathe him in,
Forever.

ajp

Evaporate

And he won’t go away
He’s under my skin
A part of my system
That will not give in.

It will not surrender
The memory of touch
The brightness of smile
That I loved so much.

I’d hoped it’d be natural
A slow dissipation
Like water from pavement
An evaporation.

Instead I’m possessed
With faithful affection
Instead of the shallow,
I have saturation.

He won’t fade away
From recesses of me
He is part of my soul now
And so shall it be.

ajp

Stormy Weather

When I was young, maybe 18, I stood on top of a hill in Manchester, MI, and watched a summer storm come in.

I stood in the rain and wind until my aunt made me come into the house for threat of lightning.

It was thrilling and scary.
I felt so small
And so ALIVE.

After a more recent rainstorm,
I was thinking about how affected the earth was.

The atmosphere was soft with a warm rosy glow.
The leaves on every tree, saturated.
The calm was thick,
And the surface of the world felt clean.

Rinsed,
Helpless to do anything but yield the power of the force that swept over its form.

It reminded me of lovemaking.

The slow beginning,
the softness of the rain’s caress,
Followed by increased intensity,
Thunder, lightning, passionate winds.

The earth, like a woman’s form yielding,
Gladly,
Gratefully,
Receiving,
Much needed attention.
Her body’s thirst, quenched
Every rose bush, lilac, tree.

Then, things grow quiet,
Thunder is distant,
Hushed.

There is peace,
Calm,
And evidence of something having left its mark on the world.
Like a woman’s world.
Now altered,
By her lover.

I wrote this poem of a woman standing in the rain.

The poem does not convey my experience on the day that I stood in the rain as well as I’d like.
Nor does it convey the depth of beauty in being loved by a thoughtful and a giving man.

But it came from the soul.

So I share it here,
Even though it isn’t Poetry Tuesday.
😉

STORM

I can see it coming,
Smell it in the air,
Feel the breeze on my face
Change to wind in my hair.

Soft rain
kisses my arms
Causing goose bumps.
Tenderness.

Wind moving over and around me,
Powerfully,
I welcome
Each caress.

Now thunder,
Darkness,
Lightning,
I endure it all,
Yielding,
The recipient
Of torrential rainfall.

Unafraid.

Storm reaches crescendo
And begins to quiet down.
I linger,
Listening hard,
For the sound
Of Thunder
Rumbling,
Softly now,
Filling corners of the sky.

I shiver.
I am drenched.
Sated,
*sigh…

Exhilarating thing,
The way a storm moves in
Captivating one
With power, light, and noise,
Possessing late night hour
With its presence, touch,
And voice.

Leaving the impressions
Of its moments on my form,
Raindrops on my lips, hair, skin.
Establishing its memory
Next to yours
Deep within.

Feet on pavement
turn toward home.
My mind, toward you.
The way you love me –

Exquisitely,
Thoughtfully.
Powerfully,
Thoroughly.

Darling,
You are storm,
too.

ajp
1/2016

Fleeting Life

Story.
I remember one of the lessons I learned about the human heart.
I remember when I learned that love didn’t obey rules and regulations.
One form of love, anyway.

We met and it was instantaneous.
The draw, the attraction, the connection.

Neither of us were models of perfection when it came to the human form,
But each mind was a good fit for the other,
And nothing else seemed to matter.

There was no flash of lightning,
But there was electricity.

And impediments.

A great divide separating us,
A chasm,
A breach,
A canyon.

And no bridge.

It doesn’t happen to everyone,
But it does happen to some.

The meeting of someone you know would be a soul mate,
If they didn’t already belong to someone else.

I recall his saying, when we discussed the apparent connection,
that he was afraid we would end up hurting,
And I answered, “It’s inevitable. We will hurt, because we met and we already know we have to say goodbye.”

And we did.

Funny.
We look at monarch butterflies and marvel at their beauty, but forget about their brief life-span.

Exquisite Unkind Realities

Delicate wings and vibrant colors of a living thing that faces swift death through no choice of its own,
except that it is the proper order of things.

Noble.
Righteous.
Pure.

In a way, I’m blessed.
I experienced “it”.
The thing people talk about over coffee and gaze upon on silver screens and read about in books.
And in a way, I’m not blessed.
Because I never got to savor or embrace it, or enjoy it.

Just like the monarch.
Hard to catch,
but wonderful to catch a glimpse of
Before it stops its fluttering
For good.

– leah

A Pearl

I knew him long ago, and upon seeing him again after the passage of time,
I saw him as he was,
without filters –
without the preconceived notions that I’d developed during the abusive childhood and teen-aged seasons of my life.

I loved him as half-woman, half-child, barely grown-up,
When men were typically mistrusted.

And now, as an adult,
with a wiser heart and mind,
my devotion has only increased with
each
slow
reveal
of the soul within his body.

His gentleness makes him great,
yet he is a man of steel.
The perfect oyster –
Tough, yet fragile,
and look…
in the very heart of him,
a pearl.

The Perfect Combination

Before I slept

As I rested,
My head on my pillow,
Love coursed through my heart.
It must be contained
In my blood,
For as the heart does its job,
The blood passes through
And its passenger,
Love,
Sings its song
So softly
Yet so soulfully,
That it resonated inside of me.
And my heart reverberated
With every note.

So I composed a sonnet
Of sorts
To him.

While I rested
Head on pillow
Waiting for slumber.

Lifting my hand,
In my imagination,
To cup his cheek
Adoringly.

Then I wondered …

Would he allow his head to lean
Just a little
Toward my palm,
Close his eyes,
And rest
Allowing himself to absorb
the warmth
Waiting for him there?

ajp
8-20-15

Seed time and Harvest, and Patience

When I feel impatient,
I picture a person in the middle of a corn field with the stalks half-grown,
Only waist high,
And the person is
Powerless, pouty, and selfish.
They are petulantly commanding stalks to grow,
To give ears of corn.
Because they want corn-on-the-cob,
and they want it now.

Corn Field
Ashley K. Photography

The scenario is ugly.
It challenges me with a valuable silent message.

Life demands that we develop patience,
and much can be learned by nature’s example of seed time and harvest.

Everything has a season…

When it comes to what I want,
The moments when I want,
And cannot have, just yet.
I accept the process of growth,
And relax.

There are legitimate wants and needs in all of us.
But everything takes time.

The dream job,
The child,
The new car,
The cabin in the woods,
The vacation in Italy,
The love of an uncommon man,
and his kiss…

If a person is wise,
They will accept the rule of nature,
And hold the lesson of the corn field in their heart.

“September Morn on the Corn”
By: jackalope22

I lived in a home for one year that had a very large window in its family room,
And if you looked through the window, you could see a huge field of corn that went back as far as you could see at the edge of the property.
I was privileged to observe this field in every season –
And each one had its own claim to beauty;
The season of winter, when snow sugarcoated the world with a sparkling crystal powder,
The season of springtime, when the furrows of earth were cocoa-colored mounds in perfect rows of narrow,

Cocoa in the spring.

The season of late summer when the corn grew green and tall and was the perfect place for games,
Or hide-aways for lovers to embrace, surrounded by green sweet-smelling life.

It was a good year.
I never tired of the view through the window.

If a person allows themselves to stop fixating on a desire,
And starts paying attention to the miracle that is happening right in front of them,
Albeit, in slow motion,
They will learn one of the keys to happiness.
To be content in whichever state they find themselves.

My favorite field of corn is imagined.
I am walking through its rows.

Just enjoy the process.

Enveloped in sunshine, I hear a rustling whisper
My jeans, with the help of a lazy summer breeze, wakens leaves from their quiet sleepy state.

They brush against my legs
Tickling my hands,
And my heart rests inside,
taking pleasure in the fact
that something I planted is growing.

One day it will bear fruit.
But where it is today is enough,
Because it is part of the process.

Can you see me walking there,
in vibrant rows of green?
That is where I go
In my mind,
To remind myself
That something is growing,
That I cannot rush the process,
That Love is long-suffering,
And always always hopes.

And while love hopes it watches
The slow-motion miracle
Knowing
Fruit will come.

I will one day hold it in my hands
Like the perfect ear of corn.
It will be amazingly sweet,
Wholesome,
And Delicious.
I will savor it on my tongue,
And it will be
worth
every moment of the wait.

– leah

The Lesson

I fell for someone once.

Hard, fast, tumbletumbletumble
Head over heels
The swoon you read about in books,
I fell for him.

He was a writer.
That was half of it right there.
I had read something he had written and was moved powerfully.

So I wrote him a small letter,
And he wrote back.
And I wrote back.
And it began.

His eyes – in nearly every photo –
Were full of mischief.
Impish things, holding the promise of
One. More. Prank.
You could see the child in the man,
And I could see the man who once was child.
And I fell for him
As he fell for me.

Phone calls, letters, conversations,
He was not as funny as he was intellectual,
And my appetite was never sated for his words, his writing, his take on things,
Life, politics, religion…
Even when I diagreed most vehemently,
His thoughts were fascinating.
Intriguing.

“More.
More, please.
No, don’t stop sharing,
More still…
I’m hungry for your thoughts.
You’re brilliant!”

That classic feeling of mutual understanding
Was there almost from the very beginning…

His words poured into me
Honey, lava, silk.
He said the things I’d always wanted to hear but never told anyone.

He was horrible and scary
in his understanding of me,
Yet wonderful and intoxicating
In his understanding of me.

And it was over as quickly as it had begun.

The most fantastic fireworks display I had ever seen.
One burst of light and color and I was captivated.
Another and another,
And my mouth dropped open.
“Can it get any better?”
Oh, yes. It can. Just wait…

Explosions of light,
Vibrant, hot, and sexy
Filled my darkened sky,
And it got brighter,
And Brighter,
And BRIGHTER…
Then darkness.

The finale.

It was the finale
And I didn’t realize,
So I wasn’t prepared
For goodbye.

We never spoke again.

The show was over
And all I had from the experience
Were ashes fluttering through the air,
Smoke
Lingering
In the sky,
Gray dust
At my feet.

I reached down into my soul,
Into the ashes lying there,
And found a tiny stone.

I named it.
“Lesson Learned”

The poets and the authors write about this thing.
This passion,
This blind blind love that does not think.

I never thought I’d experience the story,
But sometimes,
The ingredients are there,
And the pitfall presents itself.

You stumble in,
And you call it love,
But it isn’t love.

It’s something else.

I don’t know its name.

I hold the stone and I remember,
A man once found me as brilliant as I found him,
As captivating
As I found him,
Who couldn’t stay away,
And I couldn’t either,

Though we never even held each other’s hands,
Or kissed,
Or embraced.

But it was not the thing that life is made of,
It was the thing that was a tragedy before it had begun.

Mindless,
Thoughtless,
Intoxicating
Passion.

The stuff of Romeo and Juliet
Whose emotion paved the way to death.

Pyrotechnics.
Fireworks.
Bursts of light and color
As dangerous as they are spectacular.

That coat your soul in ash.
Your heart left cold.

Passion
Can never hold
The steering wheel.

I will keep the tiny stone
As a reminder.

When I am tempted to believe otherwise,
I will slip it into my mouth,
And roll it around on my tongue,
And savor the
Hard
Cold
Bitterness
Of memory.

It is better to tend to warm coals on the ground,
Than to reach for fireworks in the sky.

-leah ♡

I want

Love

Love,
How is it that you live in me?
When did you take up residence?
And what is it about this broken house that keeps you inside?

The roof leaks.
The stairs,
They creak.
There is a mournful howling of wind at times,
Outside my windows…
It can make it hard to sleep.

It must be the fire.

The fire that always glows
In my soul
For him.

He is made of water, Love.
Can you see him through my eyes?
There. Over there. Yes, Him.
The tranquil man whose hands are gentle.
Do you see his smile?
His dark lashes?

When his eyes are closed,
They create the image of a crescent moon
Upon his skin.
Adorning cheek,
A whispy fringe,
Lovely.

And when he is amused…
When he is amused by something I’ve said,
He laughs,
And,
His eyes, Love,
They flash like twinkling stars, I tell you.

You know…
I had not realized…

My lover’s face reflects
The evening sky.
Fringe of lash,
Laughing eyes,
He is moon and stars to me.

That must have been when you moved in.
You must have caught the fragrance,
Of my cinnamon sigh upon the wind.

You must have heard the humming
Of the melody
that tickles my lips
As I walk through life,
Focused and Distracted.

You followed the soft silk trail
Of discarded daisy petals
On the green of earth,
Didn’t you.

“He loves me…
He loves me not…
He loves me…
He loves me not…
He loves…”

You followed the white
And saw my smile,
And took a peek
Inside of me
To find…

A little hook
To hang your coat,
A simple shelf
To place your hat,
And there,
Near the sofa,
Near the heirloom rug purchased in an antique store,
You saw the fire.
The fire burning brightly
In my breast for him,
And said,
“I am home.”