Pace and Patter

Pace and Patter

Just around the bend where the trees greet the
river’s corner in obeisance; this is where the daylight
reminds me of the afternoons that
passed far too fast,
the conversations that began so haltingly,
like a long freight train leaving the station,
then gathered speed until the pace and patter of every
sentence
felt like the rhythms of life itself.

Sometimes your eyes captured mine and I simply enjoyed
your voice’s décor while the meaning poured past my perception.
While the light caught the coffee hue, your eyes were
my new therapy. Your invitation kept us in sweet captivity
into the opening afternoon.

Words fell upon words like leaves dance from the trees
in long lazy spirals, barely moved by ghosts or zephyrs,
circling each other and holding tightly their invisible hands.Our sentences were chains of campfire smoke, exploring easily

the air above our heads, the branches held out in open invitation.

And so we explored every question we ever raised,
every commitment we phrased to love or duty,
to friendship and beauty.  And the wisps of our explorations
did not collide in cast-iron conflagrations, but built more
solid for our uncertainties.

There were a few who, sitting apiece in the same place,
upon the same rock, with the same view and
same sun with shade,
rays and shadow made to open the soul to exploration;
with solid argument and booked definitions, broke our conversation
into pieces upon the forest floor. We perhaps talked a half hour;
never more.

But you (and all, and many, and one) knew there was no bite
in our spiced exchanges; only soul and soul in lucid uncertainty
becoming what we hoped, and know now, what it could be;
only love’s best friendship in all its freehand splendor.