love

March 23, 2023

AND COUNTING

How many times
had they almost met
over the years before that evening?

What if the Fates
had allowed meetings,
what would have changed?
Likely everything, nothing,
for when they might have met
neither was available,
he a student imagining himself
already in love, or both married
never thinking those relationships
would possibly end in divorce.

And how many times had they
been in the same place
separated by moments or hours,
so many missed connections.

And then the moment of convergence
two lives forever changed,
two worlds merged
in an unanticipated joy.

February 9, 2023

AT THE CAFE

We sit across
from each other
separated by
the small table
that teeters,
her cappuccino
licking at the rim.
My toes dance
against hers
and she looks up
quizzically.
I smile and reach
for her hand
touching her fingers
feeling the fine silver
of the rings on each.
She pulls her hand
back and looks
into the rich
brown sheen.
I stare out the window
at the odd car
looking
for a space
in the overfull lot,
then pulling
back onto
the road.
As my mocha latte
slowly cools
I feel her ankle
slide along
my calf.
She stares
at the ceiling fan
just stretching
she says
and I smile.

First appeared in Flora Fiction, Vol. 3, Issue 4, Winter 2022
https://florafiction.com/literary-magazine/volume-4/

January 31, 2023

SHE

You were a young beauty
to my middle aged eyes
that knew, despite the mirror’s
lies, that I too retained
some large measure of youth.

Even that is now behind us,
and I can no longer deny
the mirror’s sad truth,
my face unable to belie what
I knew time had wrought.

And yet your beauty has
not diminished, rather grown
as does a fine wine richer
for time’s passage, and I
swim ever deeper in love’s sea.

January 18, 2023

MACHISMO

He was fond of saying
that men need to toughen up,
show more fortitude, take
time for serious male bonding.

He would prattle on about
how so many men were
not true men anymore,
warped by modern society.

I tried my best to avoid him,
to quickly end our encounters and
when I could not, for he would
inevitably complain of loneliness.

Still, I would much rather be
in the kitchen, knives in hand
preparing a fine meal beside
the woman I so deeply love.

December 1, 2022

AUBADE

The sun peers through
the skylight, sneaks
catlike up the comforter.
He strokes her cheek,
they are drawn together,
lips touch,
toes twine,
hips press,
fingers trace,
the mattress a world
of infinite gravity.
Downstairs
the cat paces angrily,
the coffeemaker
thirsts for beans.

First Published in the 2005 Scars Publications Poetry Wall Calendar

November 10, 2022

THE SAINT OF UNCOUNTED NAMES

A desert again,
always a desert
and she the saint
of uncounted names,
her crying eases, no
smile appears for this
Madonna of the coyotes,
her orange-orbed eyes
shuttered against the
slowly retreating sun.
Once her tears watered
the desert sands, mixed
with the blood of a Christ
now long forgotten, trans-
substantiated into a spirit
we formed in our image,
no longer we in his.
The Blessed Mother
watches, holding hope,
holding space, holding
a serenity we cannot
fathom in our search
for divine justification.
She remembers, she mourns,
for what ought to be, and waits
for the windwalkers
to pull the blanket
of stars over her.

First published in Liquid Imagination, Issue 52, October 2022
http://liquidimagination.silverpen.org/

October 13, 2022

A SEPTEMBER SKY

Lie back, I said to her,
just stare up that way
stare into the sky
without any clear focus.
Do you see him now,
the hunter with his bow
outstretched, the belt
cinched about his waist
locked in his eternal search
for the prey that would free him
from his nightly quest.
And there, I pointed
can you see the great bear
gamboling with her child
or there a goddess reclining
on her heavenly throne.
Now she said, that’s
not it at all, not even close,
look over there, don’t you see
a small child crying out
for her mother,
and there, two lovers
locked in an eternal embrace,
their lips barely touching,
hips pressed together
reclining as one,
and there, clear as day
a cat lying curled
as though sleeping
in the warmth of a hearth.

Publshed in As Above, So Below, Issue 9, August 2022
https://issuu.com/bethanyrivers77/docs/as_above_so_below_issue_9

October 7, 2022

AT FIRST

The first time
I heard it
I knew
that voice
came from a place
I had never visited,
would never
be able to go.

It penetrated me
reverberated
within me
a harmonic
that shook
me to my core.

She reached
and grasped
what I thought
I had kept hidden,
and as I danced
with my
new bride,
I knew Etta
had led me
to love
At Last.

September 14, 2022

WRONG AGAIN

As a teenager, like so
many others of our narrow
minded, obsessed gender,
I imagined myself a great lothario,
girls on the edge of womanhood
lining up for my attention.

The absurdity of that dream
was lost on me and my peers,
testosterone drowning it in a sea
of hormones, and we were oblivious
to the real obstacle always
right in front of us, that we
imagined love and sex
in the first person only.

Now that youth and even
middle age are behind me
I still try to recall when I realized
that love requires the second person
singular, and my pleasure is
complete only when
my partner’s is as well.

September 7, 2022

ONLY ONE LEFT FOOT AFTER ALL

We took private dance lessons,
she already versed in the dance,
a natural grace and flow, and I
moving with seemingly fused hips,
unsteady, bordering on clumsy.

As we went on, it began to come
to me, never graceful, but no longer
embarassing to myself nor her,
and the teacher said I could be
a natural, a kind and gentle lie.

At our wedding we glided around
the floor, a slower Eastern swing,
and when the song ended, I smiled
knowing that I had found the one