The soil recognizes
the vibration of your
soft soul and soft soles
when you walk around
the garden's edge.

Grounds from every corner
of the world hasten
to be underneath your feet.

Twenty dignified, upright,
and humble footsteps
from the lilies
to carnations

and much of the earth
is covered.

Do not leave me
not even for a day.

For a day is long,
difficult to understand

and one without you
exhausts me.

By my life's end and lost poem
the world will be covered with you.

Your name and scent and actions
will be written and then scattered

upon pages and hearts and stones,
upon date-trees, grape-leaves, and palms

for centuries to come.

The world is unfolding inside of me
because your departure took
the east, the west, the north, the south,
the fall, the spring, the trees from me.

With chisel and hammer
I carve the length of your legs
and the width of your waists
and the bend of your arms
and the ***** of your shoulders
until I arrive at your brain
where I reach with chisel and hammer
until I come across your spring
of wisdom and knowledge
your fountain of thought and belief.

I have been chasing you
for so long
that I have scraped my knees
on the curb of eternity.

Love, if you are the
answer, could you have someone
repeat the question?

I wanted to write your name down in blood
over and over and over
on slabs of gold and stone
but you prefer to be left alone.

I wanted to build a monument of your face
to overlook your land, your tribes, your home
but you prefer to be left alone.

Instead, I wrote your name on lavender sands,
your birth date on the golden change of winds,
my love for you on the sunset over the Indian Ocean.

I wrote everything for you
on places of scatter
and on places of dissolve.

I wanted to leave your mark on the world
but realized the irony in such
because you are already aligned
with the rising sun and setting moon,
you are already an endless cycle of life and death.

Still, I want to write you down in history
but you don't want to leave your mark on the world,
you don't want your coming and going announced.

To leave my mark on the world,
you said,
I would first have to injure it,
disturb the status quo,
but I would rather be left alone.

swim
through the dim
      abyss of the ocean's blue water
      to become a daughter
                  of the violent and quiet sea.

dive
through cold knives
      as your body submits to the waves,
      you must let yourself cave
                  to the water's hypnotic sway.

trade,
for green jade
      scales to cover your ivory legs.
      no longer will your wade
                  in the shoreline's shallow waters.

dance
with the chance
      of happiness running through your mind
      and you will learn, in time,
                  in order to swim you must drown.

Mulling over the
Usual things and
Nothing changes much.
Difference sought
And dreams in
New experiences but
Everything's the same


©Jacqui Slade