In between breaths –
that’s how fast it happens –
a quiet announcement, an omen
a sniffle leading to an avalanche
like some damn butterfly
lost halfway across the world

graffiti making light of death
of battling demons manufactured
by boredom and plastics

a 40-year-old song resurrected
just as contentment was settling in
with no regrets and less of the blues

In between a thought and a hard place
where we are drawn like the 99
waiting for the one, waiting for a reveal
or maybe a return to wonder we knew
briefly before concrete covered the garden
and like the idiots we are, happy for grace

I watched the penguins and giraffes
and wondered if they had any sense
of place or anticipation.
I often feel I am awaiting something.
There was no one around- it felt like
I had stepped into a H. G. Wells novel
where all the people were gone
except the elderly ticket taker at the gate
who was not sure of the day
but smiled and wished me well.
I smelled Kools and saw the full ashtray
outside the gift shop but the only noise
came from a pair of ravens nearby.
The lynx was nonplussed.
There were trucks running somewhere
and fresh lumber in a pile near the emus.
I walked for what seemed like hours
but it was half the time I thought
when I checked. I was hungry so I ate
a sandwich by the lake. The swans were
somewhere warmer. The bison grunted into
the mud and grass. I was… oddly content.
A little stretch of road, some woods,
the smell of the first spring bulbs opening,
and I was ok with being grey and undefined.

The afternoon light did that
thing where out of my periphery
there was a flash and a glance of the face
I keep imagining as near as I could wish

the way one sees lightning
in an early summer storm
from far away,
not quite in sync with thunder;

maybe that’s when the planes
of existence float closely together
or maybe it’s my own tectonics –
memory and fantasy shifting

in such a way that I can feel
breath and laughter and whiskers
as easily as the quiet way
he makes my heart crack open.

The smile was an empowering one,
full of warm nights by the creek,
cool water on warm skin…
not exactly swimming
but floating where time has no relevance.

The touch was somehow familiar
as if a return to something
from long before we met.

There was no worry
or need for direction,
no hurry to move or create;
just a silvery slip into arms
that felt like home.