Clinic Waiting Room with French Impressionists

The ball-capped men, old men, sit motionless
Arms folded in existential disapproval
They read not, no, and neither do they toil1
Over boxes that light up and make noise

French impressionist lilies soften the walls
Echoing with educational racket
A cartoon shark counting the numbers off
To a child embalmed in a plastic box

While his mee-maw looks to eternity
Through a door that opens from the other side

1Saint Matthew 6:28-29

cage match between
excitement
    and sense of place
clothed in atmosphere
wrapped in the ***** I feel, I feel
sensation - wonderfully dizzying
in the gentle rocking of mother universe
the evening waves
the off-color tall grasses leaning back and forth
sipping a drink-drink
lined with the salt of the earth
permeating cells
toxins in body and mind start to leave
shoulders relax to softer tones
posture realigns to beauty

your hair was long
when I first knew you.
it was straight and golden
mussed all together from weeks
and weeks without seeing a brush.

now it falls unordered
a frizzy explosion
of uneven curls
just as wild as it ever was
but darker
and shorter
more like a lion’s mane
than a waterfall
more like you
and less like all the weight
of all the world
was woven into its strands
to make it fall so straight.

and you talked about tomorrows
like a breeze
you did.
whatever direction felt right
is where you’d go
and it made me smile to think
that I was sailing a boat
not with someone who knew the wind
or where it blows
but with the wind her very self.

your tomorrow now
is much more solid
than it’s ever really been.
you’ve kept the wind with you
(as I always knew you would)
and it’s not that I
don’t know how to sail
I just miss having the wind with me
always
always.
I always used
to have the wind.

maybe I relied too much on you
maybe I always knew you’d leave
maybe I convinced myself
I’d never have to look
for something I thought I had
something I never really had to begin with.

maybe I miss you.

no one talks to me
about tomorrows anymore.
I think I know why.
I think you were right
to shed all that weight
from your hair
to shed the weight
of tomorrow
maybe even
to shed my weight.

maybe you were right
to shed my weight and I’m sorry
I’m sorry because I know
I know I meant more to you
than that
I know if you read this
you would shake your head
I know what I meant to you.
I just don't know what I mean to me.

your hair was long
when I first knew you.
I want to see
what it looks like
tomorrow.
will you let me see it then?