Pearl

this opalescence:  moon in mussel shell sky,
the brown trees green-rimmed, a lichen-lime
in the dream my lover’s dream catcher sends
me the enchantments of high as the girders
arching their cathedral window wing-shapes
for the silhouette our favorite bridge is –
golden-gated as a large harp
through the fog-gleaming dawn.

We’re Grieving

the dying youth, the “ex” who was the bolt of sun
still arrow-deep in your keening.

Comet spun berserk, your fists clenched & unclenched,
a desperate storm in this grip for all the dying youths,
all that abomination.

Here is how a tree might grieve,
its limbs a shower of clubs becoming a tearing within.

There is no amount of liquor, of breaking, of entering,
of pursuing phantoms that can possibly salve this,
& I keen too, I, in the face of your self-destruction
keen & name the causes, every recriminatory echo
of blame, blame, blame.

Blame who?  You the wild man ripping yourself up
for a day & for a night?  Blame me for the perceiving?

Still, in the aftermath we hug as torches
surprised still to be lit, hug as if with a sudden recognition
of our roots bound by skeins of emotional skin.

I do the laundry.  You paint the kitchen;
salt-bleached white meeting deep yellow,
& all an astounding gold kenneled into the knowledge,
brilliant, that our world did not break after all.

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Resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, Stephen Mead has intermittently been submitting multi-genre work for publication going on four decades.  He remains grateful to all of the editors who have given his art and writing a good home as now, a retiree, he continues to try and sell his poetry-art hybrids and novels via CreateSpace, https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B002P5TVQC/allbooks