May We Live With Chalk On Our Hands

I started into a poem that just kept going and going... and it's really rough, but the end of it struck me enough to publish tonight because I don't know when I'll get to the edit with a full slate of work to do the next few days. Think of two people who have lived in the same place (not necessarily a physical place, but a place where they we're built for each other), but they've never met, as odd as it may seem, though they've definitely touched the same places and the same people.

The shortest distanceImage by a rancid amoeba via Flickr
Between two hearts
Is an embrace
As hearts verbally pound out
The breathless nature
Of holding each other a long time
And for the first time

We dip a weary soul
Into the flood of emotion
That runs from the sewers to the sea
Wary to be carried away
Without a wave

Our inertia to change
Must melt the resistance—
Give in to emotional magnetism—
And re-pour the foundation
Upon which we walk.

A satisfied life,
Never that which we intended to live,
When a blank slate lives
All around us—
A canvas built for chalk
Driven by hands,
Both large and small,
To create a life of love,
And a story that we will tell
To be told by those we loved
Long after we’re gone.

And when the weather comes
Or the sidewalks stumbles us again,
We’ll watch it wash away the art
And rise from a scraped knee.
We’ll hurt and heal,
Make mistakes that reveal,
A newly cleansed canvas
And a fresh patch of skin
That gives us what we always dreamed:
To wake up and start again.

Pop it like it's...

Image by jamierytlewski via Flickr

Strange days these, in a space where most aren't used to being guarded by such depths of white snow. For me, I'm not much bothered, with a stack of books to read, six months of Wired mag to catch up on, and a cupboard full of food, which is a good thing since way-out-where-huh-oh in the boonies has a tendency to be last on the list of roads plowed.

Mom said last week, "You can take my car if you want to get out of here?"
I said, "No need and no desire to be out there!"

This afternoon is supposed to bring us another gift of four to six inches, and I made my emergency run for supplies yesterday... to the library. Stocked up. BAM!

I'm caring for the hacienda while the parents are away, snow-birding as it is called, and since they left things have begun to fall apart around me. The recliner dropped a small screw (fortunately, I didn't step on it). The toilet paper dispenser popped a wooden plug from the screw hole that it was built to fill. Waiting for the third thing to drop...

Meanwhile, I will be in my quiet paradise of white, stoking the wood-burning stove, tending to a small fire next to which I'll be writing, writing, writing, and making headway on all the fictional tales that are forever on my mind.

[If you don't hear from me by Monday, please send in the St. Bernards.]