touchstone

face down on your stomach

back scratching

evening

this is the story i 

am telling minute by 

minute

constructing you from

the pile of bedsheets 

with hair

and eyes

i sometimes wonder what its

like for you when you

lean toward me to

press your face into 

this one 

what do you see 

a small storm of jaunty

lines light hair expressions

i am 

a puppeteer

peering from behind the screen

imagining the show he performs

but will never see

it is harder than we realize

to know oneself from 

backstage

then i look up at you for 

a moment

the breath of you experiencing 

this show of me and

i come suddenly and briefly

to the touchstone of 

myself

from there i can measure

all the rest

Branches

When we were young we named mountains from our window perch.

I would go there someday, I imagined,

sprouting wings and making my way from the windowsill out,

touching down, toes first, to plant the flag of my world there.

but the trees were smaller then, and we could see distances from between the bedsheets,

now they've grown old, tall and jagged, dangling heavy limbs into that line of sight.

The world seems to have closed in on us this way--

growing as we grow, eclipsing view.

I imagined maturity would tell us who we wanted to become--who we could become.

But now I'm seeing that it only tells us more and more what we cannot be,

offering little direction but that: blocked flightways, a narrow horizon, 

a view of branches.