http://www.sparkthemagazine.com/?p=8798

It was you all the way, my love.

Right from the days we dangled

on air roots of the banyan tree

till all things herbaceous died down to the ground

in the last autumn of life, it was you. Only you.

You taught me the subtleties of life

through ferns and woody evergreens

through trees that lived on leafless forever,

through some that died and grew back again

when a new season arrived.

You taught me how to inhale the scent of flowers from photographs

Taught me to whip up images of mulch, roots, sunlight and breeze

…the humility of wrangled branches

that hosted glossy hairless leaves.

Songs of abandonment I heard in apple blossoms,

the silent melody of earth through soil up to its neck in flowers,

complete stillness through gales surrendering to valleys

to then disappear forever.

Love was as simple as a rustic four-petal rose growing wild.

It smelled like mountain mist lobbed in pine cone tassels.

As warm as native violets and golden poppies,

sitting in a vase on a table for two.

Your eyes were a cinnamon ocean – fragrant like hearth

where all my rivers met, where I merged at dusk

to lay calm at night. The same night

that made wet rot out of people, turned them to fuzzy spores.

Sometimes when cold and chill claimed my heart

and the world became elliptical,

you held my hand, showed me nymphs hiding inside daffodils

so that I laughed…and then you laughed with me.