Late October,
and they have assuredly returned.

A canopy of clusters.

At second glance
the leaves on the trees are wings.

Whisper into the dreamscape
for they sense your voice.

Revive them with your breath.

Hold out your hand
like you hold out hope.

The warm sound of flutterings.

Circadian clocks in their antennae,
a sense of where they've been
and where they are going.

The gift from their Creator
moves them in the right direction.

~
I like the number 2,
so much in fact
I like it twice,
as in 22.

Now 2+2 equals 4,
but some say 2+2 equals 5,
It's quite the moral conundrum.

Still 5 is a cardinal, a prime,
why the Pythagoreans
thought of 5
as the marriage
between heaven and earth.

I empathize with 5 though,
for that's a lot of pressure
to put on a single solitary digit.

But I think I like him too,
he's a friend of 10,
which reminds me of
fingers, toes and Bo Derek.

But let's get back to 2,
which supposedly is company,
and 3, you see, is a crowd,
yet odd first and foremost
--Mersenne knew best, I guess.

Which brings me to 1,
small, but positive,
coveted, but united,
a face of multiple identities.

And should any other number
devise against it,
they would have no
success at all
--none, zero.

To be honest,
I think 1 likes 2,
and vice versa,
they're a complimentary couple
--both highly dutiful
and attracted to each other.

After all, it's said, "Someone may overpower
one alone, but two together can take a stand against him."
~

coloring inside the lines is impossibly bleak,
with a hissing noise
atomic locomotive
rounds the bend,
extrasensory perception is not
a mindless gift,
it's a train station in the clouds,
tracking all my starting points to you,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.

you leave in opera
with secrets and grievances
under the radar,
and your ready-made
wings catch in the power lines,
you're coiling like smoke
in the arches of my cathedral,
a sense of elegant decay
while sweeping up the debris,
committing arson
with the paraffin of my temporal lobe.

yesterday's fairground waltzes,
ghosted lullabies,
and woodland hymnals,
set in a context not of
resolution and closure,
but of contradiction and assimilation,
break the bond,
away they float on purveyor belts,
one too many molecules,
one too many departures,
always on the surface of everything,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.

~
faded mauve
butterflies
fluttering along
defeated
selenitic walks
the sound of
abandoned ship bells
in the far
parlor north
but the guilt of
wind is silent
like Venetian whispers
from motionless lips

us, then
inward and upward
one step too far
a house of strangers
tipping like boats
seaworthy as sleep
oars divide
the ocean
but framed pictures
and love letters
unite the walls
to this unstable floor
then, us
always, us
~