Emerald

Not with blind faith but with lips opened, anticipating the space that precedes contact - the moment just before hello - In that way I present myself to you without expectation or even capacity to define how it might feel to see or unfold in you.

What can I expect other than what is as I see past a surface to a you within a you, concentric, concentrated in emerald descent along a path that falls toward re-union, where you and I meet in a concurrent fullness and vacuum?

Secret, sacred place unmarked, between these words that began at full voice and collapse into inchoate muttering, wide-eyed silence face to face with an emptiness I have never touched but have always known.

While Walking in a Parade

I look up to see a woman looking down and, because the parade day has now darkened into slates and smokey chocolate browns of city nights, I can see nothing more of her than her silhouette, framed in the fourth storey window - a big square of burnt yellow light.

Then, when a street-to-sky rocket shoots up, explodes, it bathes the brick face of this building in its blues and white. Post-powder silence ensues.

I wave and she nods, turning away from the window. Who is she? Who am I, looking up? I am carried for an instant from my body, through hers, and then back to the street where I find myself holding a piece of a language that seems not to belong to me.

A whistle blows and I walk forward, amidst my contingent dressed in reds and blues, a hundred yards more toward the reviewing stand. Bright lights shine in my face and chase away pursuing shadows.

The parade continues, as before.