A Memory Shared

A memory you share with me,

And it is mine as well,

I remember it as you do,

We share it, like the bread at table,

A memory so vivid to us both,

It makes us smile

Scraping the sky

Sheathed in glass and steel, looming over its neighbors

Yet unremarkable in every way but for that crane

Recently unmoored by wind, reinstated now on its skyperch,

Strapped on its aery, atop six or seven unclad floors,

Unfinished, raw, wrapped in brown, unceremoniously

Plain, unlike the giant pencil box skyscraper on which

It sits, the builing sheathed in steel and glass,

Looming blue and grey, under blue skies and white

Clouds, yearning for completion

That riot of color

That riot of color is not natural to the meadow,

Some gardener's hand has made the beds bloom

In an unusual rainbow array, pleasing to the

By Dinkum (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

Native eye that decorated the walkways with

That riot of color, that rainbow array that

Spells spring in this corner of the city

It will rain

It will rain today, just not when we expect it

The rain will come as no surprise

An offering from darkened skies

We cannot refuse spring showers,

We'll say, "Spring showers, bring

May flowers," even in the cold

We want the earth enriched by waters

That swell the soil

We await the buds that will pop

Up from the ground to greet us

Maybe in April as we get warmer

There is happiness in the colors that

Spring brings. And hope.

Desire quietly creeps

Desire creeps on little cat feet,

Slowly, steathily, filling the darkness

With softness and moaning

Thought held hostage to the foggy

Ache of need, willing our bodies

To act, steaming up the night,

Desire is the crescendo of our love

Our bodies know our minds and follow

Those tender cat paws into the darkness,

They know our hearts as the darkness

Fills with the heat of night

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A footnote: Over 50 years ago, I wrote a poem in which
desire crept quietly on little cat feet, and the steamy heat
is all that remains of the original in my mind. This attempt
to reconstruct completely misses but it's fun trying!

When?

When did it begin to fall inevitably apart?

Maybe it started when I began to bore him.

Maybe when I began to bore myself,

When I became boring to myself, lost all interest

He seemed disinterested, distracted, when I spoke

I could not hold his attention anymore

Truthfully, I only half-listened to his stories, too

They all began sounding like complaints, like whining,

Tuning him out may have been the first signs of

Not caring, and I did not like when he stopped

Listening to what I said, when he could no longer

Hear me