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Bridges
2/15/21
The February dormancy
arrives with a layering of ice,
a frozen connection
across the pond.
The subject of this plane of reunion
coupling Nature’s bodies,
presents as a fissure
in human relations.
This bridge,
encompassing properties mysterious,
moves between material states
with stealth.
Its transitory dimension
and translucence or turbidity,
unsettling as we traveres it,
yet exhilarating as we engage it.
I note the deer
with an innate sense of trust,
move across its impermanence
as an avenue to sustenance.
There is a natural recognition
of symbiosis and respect.
This gateway to the present
no longer hostage to past properties.
This trust, however, suffers
the faint fear of a foothold
softened by time and
certainty’s loss.
The bonding and breaking
within its molecular structure,
activity beyond our gaze,
serves notice of fragility’s enablers.
But what of bonds
that tether and snap in silence,
no longer of Nature, but emotion?
Is not the human formulation as impermanent,
subject to undetected transformations?
Is time our nemesis
in a movement to a state
where listless vapor infuses our memory
and renders friendship weakened?
What bulwark is there
to combat diluted contact,
which drains
intimacy, sharing and growth?
It is an irony that ice in relations
may act as a more formidable bridge, once thawed,
to other states of connection
more enduring and with greater transportability.
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Contours
2/18/21
The topographic map,
marking lines of earth’s history,
rhythmic and undulating,
a key to unseen mystery.
It is puzzling to decipher
a reading more visual,
for lines and contours
are never quite usual.
The surfaces withheld
in a state of unknown.
Peaks and swales divulged,
no scenery overblown.
A crag or a bluff,
a butte or a stone,
can be fashioned in shape
but eludes all tone.
A plain or a meadow,
its grasses askew,
does not share its secrets
of various fescues.
The oak tree exists,
standing majestic and proud,
beneath a dark sky,
ensconced in a cloud.
Their faces come forth,
but no longer a landscape.
Rather, my friends on a screen,
without any handshake.
I see sands and crevasses,
steep rifts and small mounds,
pocked marks and scar tissue,
rugged lines all around.
They are contours again,
a map more revealed,
of faces I know,
a history congealed.
Their stories stand out,
but so far untold,
so much to discover,
indications so bold.
There is mystery the same,
as both share a drama,
with markings that etch
the forces of trauma.
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