For Carol Decklin

1.

Its evening and as I turn into my drive I have to brake.
The deer is startled by my lights - they blind him so he cannot see.
I turn them off and quiet the engine.
He sees me now in evening's light and blinks as if in recognition.
He looks across the path and moves, in mid-step pauses - glances back.
He steps again in wary but unhurried motion.
I hold my breath and drink in every detail, enthralled by every move.
My foot slips, the car rolls back an inch or more.
I look back up, the stag is gone, the bushes waving where he, panicked, leapt.

2.

The crimson blossoms wave in gentle motion then rest as midday breeze disturbs the air. 
I see the humming bird in blurred and darting motion as she arrives to take her daily sip.
This time she drinks beside the windows where I sit - 
I marvel at the iridescent feathered breast and fancy I can freeze her wings by blinking.
I, thoughtless, shift my chair to ease my view. 
The slightest noise is heard,
one instant past and she is nowhere to be seen, no moving shrub betrays her flight.

3.

I watch you as you enter Borders, you're frowning till you see I'm sitting there.
A sunbeam breaking through the clouds.  I have so much I want to say to you.
We order large cupped lattés and sit to talk in borrowed time.
You smile and tell me this and that and why and how -
I listen to the blur and dart of conversation.
My rehearsed speech unreachable, as scattered papers tossed into a stream.
I try to read your eyes as if to pass some wordless feeling, and glimpse a smile within,
swift masked though as you glance away.
I breathe and my bewitched mind sees a fleeting fog as if on glass between us ...

I hold my breath to clarify my view and sit enthralled by what I see and hear, yet still I  need to pull you close, to touch your lips and feel your living, breathing warmth.
I need to taste and touch as well as see and hear to know I live again.
I tremble like the deer.
In dream I slip and break the glass - you, startled, leap away.

Or, worse, I draw the pane aside to reach for you, to touch ...

And find you're in an instant - gone - and hope for love now lost.

 
   
Poetry © 2004 Decklin's Domain,  All Rights Reserved ~ reproduced with permission of the twisted dwarf

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Revised - 2004/April/8
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