the fox and the apples

searching

If I could trace the lines that ran
Between your smile and your sleight of hand
I would guess that you put something up my sleeve
Now every time I see your face the bells ring in a far-off place
We can find each other this way I believe
Come and find me now

There is no earth, no tomb, no dates
graven into stone
No place to come to visit you
to speak to you to close my eyes
and hold you in my heart

Though I'm here in this far off place
My air is not this time and space
I draw you close with every breath
You don't know it's right until it's wrong
You don't know it's yours until it's gone
I didn't know that it was home ‘til you up and left
Come and find me now

existence even in death should be binary, at least for now
but, where are you, the unburied one
the childsized hole carved into my once whole heart
i cried all night
because i was made to hold the pain in a way I must never have been made to hold you

I keep you in a flower vase
With your fatalism and your crooked face
With the daisies and the violet brocades
And I keep me in a vacant lot
In the ivy and forget-me-nots
Hoping you will come and untangle me one of these days
Come and find me now

(words in italics by J. Ritter)

right now...

I am reading...currently and sporadically, though constantly (every day)...from one of these. They are all fabulous. Caesar (because I needed a gigantic bio to placate the scholar), Dead Heat because...hello! It's Dick Francis' new book, Gilead--amazing--it reads like a basil exhale, and Summer Before Dark (that whole Lessing-Nobel prize thingy).

Oh...and Jenica told me Dumbledore is gay. I don't think that is for J.K. to determine though.

"baykus" (etymology: J Renee)

For my uncle's 60th, we are supposed to bring him sixty of something. So lately, I have been busy writing 60 haikus to bring. He now lives at the bay house once built by my grandfather. It is the stuff of family legends. Here are some of my memories there encased in haikus:

Bird or Indian
Branch of imagination
Is driftwood

Squeezing through my toes
Oozes the brown mushy mud
Full of squish

Beachwater-Baylight
Castle of Young Patriarchs
Ruled by Bills

Think of Mobile Bay
When you feel so far away
Then it’s near

The fiery orb
Drowns in the night’s warm waters
Ah…sunset

Swat smack go for blood!
Kill that little sucker quick!
Yellowflies

Man shall not live by
Land alone, for he shall live
By the sea

Put on the armor
The battle is not against
Flesh but fish

Put on the armor
Your old Tennis shoes and gig
Flounder waits

Try not to scare them
Step lightly or slide your feet
Gig em quick

I wade out in peace
In the bay and the silence
Lost in thought

Pelican preachers
Have church on the old posts with
Their big mouths