Time

Clusters of desire, red as rubies, have the authority to cast shadows and
blur the bouquets, perfected visions, when we hold them too close to our eye.

Oversight

More silence...yet, somehow, deeper insights unfold. This perspective allows me to receive sharper angles of truth. I witness your character unveil. Outside, the natural world whispers. Beauty transfixes me, turning this place we've stumbled into right side up, again. Life carries my wings out from underneath your man-child shadow. I wish I could love you. I've never been good at goodbyes.

Discussion & Love. For My Blog Followers...

I took this picture today--two flowers leaning towards each other. Part of me sees botany in discussion, while the other half sees the flowers entirely in love. Perhaps that is significant in love...a slow, but perpetual growth towards one another. It takes two, I know that...

~ ~

I am savoring the last few pages in the book, "One Thousand Gifts," by Ann Voskamp. My life has been altered by the focus of another's vantage point on gratitude. This book has gifted me; it's indescribable to incapsulate in a single blog entry. I just know I leaned into it, and with that, like love, anything is possible. But you have to lean into love if you want it...

~ ~

On the drive to work today, I thought about gratitude in the not-so-obivous areas of my life, and I felt moved to let the people out there who read my blog, the ones I do know, and the ones I've never met, that I appreciate you.

I dedicate this posting and photo to you...you out there in the United States, Russia, Germany, China, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, France, and Latvia who have been following my blog that contains my poems, photos, essays, random thoughts, and the intimate chapters of my heart.

Love & Thanks,

Pilar

Friday, at a California Church

She speaks, but all I hear is Boston,

edgy accents jut through her story,

of how she used to beautify

The dead, and how she loved

doing makeovers. Death never looked

so put together, or how the body waits

for nothing, and still manages to sigh.

They told her this would happen,

this release of the body, the settling in:

Her, new at the job, and them, the dead,

both forfeit to the finality. Her fingers offer

fruits of color: outline, blend, highlight.

~

At the church, I empty the wastebaskets,

in counseling rooms, carry bags of tissue

clouds, and toss a white sky into the dumpster

of what’s left behind: tears, loss, regret.

And, I think of you, and leave my body to travel

the spine of California—the greatest distance

is between our two points. Forfeits kill the forthcoming;

the season of waiting finally sighs out, and desire

reminiscences for the passing of thinly-weaved love.

I Have Found a Dream...

"I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life and sigh." -- Isabella Bird (1831-1904). Victorian era travel writer.

Variations of Hope

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

1 Corinthians 13:13

You're Not Really Here

Sometimes, it’s about the first person

You’ll see when you land,

Not off a plane, but this place

You’ve called home. It’s the moment you know

All you’ve worked for

Somehow doesn’t make sense, like leaving you

To start over, and move at an irregular pace.

It’s this shaking, not the kind you remember,

But from lack of food, too many hours spent

Going everywhere, but perpendicular:

Return to Sender. Person unknown.

So you go back, back to wishing,

Wishing you had the time, maybe to take up carving,

And call something your own...our own.

But there’s no you, so I dig away at the landscape,

Finding buckets of memories, baked fossils;

My spade turns circles in the air, and I become lost

In my own motions, another reason to start again,

Drift. Tread. Drift. Tread.

Until I untangle myself from this sea of hair.