The Swing

Magnolia sweet air, hanging fragrant and languid around our heads,
Tell him a story of my thoughts;
Of the small droplet of water, wending its way beneath the cotton
Swell of summer's haze,
Reminding us of
Thirst.

The other Life of Bees

If there is a road through all of these stars,
And what seems glow and beckon really is,
Then journeying there can only be a blink and blip on someone's radar screen,
When the little movement that is us displaces calm,
Deep within some Nebula,
Replacing void with ripple, and wrinkle in Time.

There will be this errant bee, carrying us, and we, the
Honey of Life, bringing sweetness
to some
Distant Flower, and the various
Lives,
Lit upon its Petals.

Tempered Nectar

I think of glen and dale, dark and
sweet as claret balm,
Swirled and stained from your lips, and spilled onto mine, like
dye.


I can taste the slow oak of
age, pungent as forest sweat,
in the din and mist of spring,
Its languid tongue, grape-touched and tingling,
Meeting mine, softly.

In the dark, the lips that part and join,
hide the quick soft sigh
of
New nectar.

Self Portrait by Dawn M. Nevills

If I am but a canvas, upon which life ekes out its etchings,
Then I should like the map, like the lines,
To show that love has played itself out upon my Face;
That each event - whether in Sorrow or Joy - has left its mark,
Its Moment, and its Meaning;
I should like a bit of the wild colours in God's sky to
Show themselves, in Morning and Evening,
When yawning sunlight's watering tendril fingers,
And evening glows' sleepy embers suggest
Brief Times, during which my eyes have beheld them;
And I should like a Man, when he sees these maps of life
on my face, and on my body, not to see decay,
But the gentle passage of Time, and, in the changes
which mark each passing year,
A different kind of
Beauty.

Vulcanic Tantrum

See the rock and steam of upheaval,
Ridding itself of itself, upon the steadied
Bosom of rock and traversed petrified field!

They slide down the sharpened, impossible peaks of
Outburst,
into the
Blackened, crawling sludge-river of fire and fresco.

All are rock to rock, nudged and nuanced
Into fossilized frenzy.

Trees in Fog

There is no echo here, in this grotto.
The fog, like errant fireside smoke,
shrouds and silences, reminding the looming dark shadows of intrusion, that theirs is a momentary presence, controlled and blanketed, still, by Nature's Gray.
Sentinel trunks, stretching upwards into the vapoured gloom, bid oblivion skyward,
And the still, small trickle of mesmerized water, wending its way carefully
through the mire, is
A mere memory of spring abandon, which, nymphlike,
Splashes stretching fragrant blooms with every
Newness.
Their absence, and that of the sun-dappled hillside, are
strangely noted.

Dragon Breath on Morning Water

At long last, like August light, Faulkner's mention bemoaning end,
The lake's clear glass surface showed breath upon it,
Wrinkling suddenly, as if, after sighing,
Some unseen hand smoothed it out, carefully, like a coverlet for fish,
and
The long stringing lace of lake bottom greens.

Rolling forth, sheen glimmer blinked amongst the folds,
Reflecting shine eyes, appearing and disappearing,
Like gigantic fireflies
Displaced, and drowned, yet preserved under glass, amidst the waves.

Docking Indigo

When the indigo ink of the evening flows out across a sky bleeding into soft whispers and gleaming glimpses,
The stars shall, with clear, pointed angle fingers, lead the small, spare whisps of words
Escaping between lips - between us, lightening quiet -
And capture them, like quick hands, to breathe them back, softly, in
Etched echoes of sparkle, sprinkled without care, across an endless, undulating canvas.
I shall catch the quick breath against my mouth, as your lips move softer than a feather, across mine, in an almost-kiss,
And disturb the wheeling moon, in its winding arc, as it bounces beneath clouds, dodging the dark side of itself in earnest moves, like a chess piece seeking to show its face, in a mate-move, all the while
Gliding like a sudden, shooting shower of meet or might
Upon which we wish, and linger,
And love, languidly.
....oh, languidly, like
Your sangria tongue against my ear, mapping the invisible baton and slow turn of
Step, and circle, as it is mirrored and measured, in the sway and sigh that is the
Matched-more-precision whirl of
Planet We.

Pillow wok

If, in this pale liquid sunlight finger, I draw your smile as it is now,
Murmuring softly against my ear, amidst this pillow,
Then there shall be a burst of warmth
Forever embroider-emblazoned on these white plains of
Weaving,
And even when my eyes close - be it death or pause (for little death is not so,
And in play and patter all bears thinking and doing, to say we did)-
The beacon of your eyes will blink and wink and
Crinkle wrinkle
Against my chilled
nose.

Jar Saids

Steak,sangria,sanguine and sultry somnambulance, soothing and song filled - sashay in summer, seeking;

All these appetites, controlled like a chilled cellar,
Shielding my sleepy need from the soul-destroy stripes of
Forget's
Seasonal disorder, stifling and cloth-choked, stuffed brutally, finally, punishingly on to
Shelves filled with stolen thought, quick kiss, and quiet sigh, preserved.
I see my eyes peering out of the caged and caught glimpses there, unpainted.

You are spring, and speak, and sap, this late summer,
Rising through roots clinging deep and early to the sleep of
Neglected now,
Breathing surely, strangely, softly,
Towards the honey hum of
Need.

Summer of Surprises

Summer is uncharacteristically seasonally mixed this year;
As if the earth has suddenly decided, perhaps, that it likes all seasons,
(Except for the sleep of winter), and, so, gives us a taste of each, in the space of
Several weeks:
The jalapeno of summer makes us sweat, in the best of ways, beneath the
smell of coconut oil and the beach towels we only see several times a year;
The crunch of homemade bread (breathed in like freshly shampooed hair, undried
And flung about, stinging one's cheeks in wild abandon) complete with the
Tang of butter, melting and gleaming on lips, fed with searching palms;
And the sudden crunch of green apple, jesting of spring, although the green is more held in this round orb, remembered, with its spurting juice upon a lover's nose (wicked granny, not so old after all), than in the dew-dropped leaves surrounding of
A few weeks back,
Made more surprising, by the painting of Brie, coating our tongues with honey warmth,
which
Ices its sudden, slick, summit.

We Beings

If this existence, in which we are orbs of a larger part,
Shells of the one shell,
Dust collected, into bins of we's,
Amassed carvings of longings for Happy Play by the
Great Being, Breathed Into; gentle empowered Marionnettes of Living,
Then it is enough that we recognized each other,
Children in Paradise,
Until Now.
Now is the leaf, unfurled;
Now is the Nectar and newness,
The Fulsome Fruit, and Juice of Being,
And More-Than-Seed, spilling Joy
Into the
Corporeal Expression of
More Now.
It is Here-we-are,
Gently set into a Garden,
To Grow as
We will.

Lip Liner Flight 99

There are small lines about your lips.
I think that each line tells a story of all the stories, concerning skin, and art,
And Love,
And with every imprint of Time upon us,
Be it Sorrow or Joy,
Meaning is impressed on the shell of us,
Like a gentle Sculptor's Model,
Developing nightly.
I like to trace them, softly, in the darkness, those small lines,
Imagining the words, (coaxed from you with low rumbles and beard in neck growling)and watch the breath that comes with their Awakening,
Which seems, like Magic, to Rush to Touch,
Summoned.
You call it "Fight Against Resuscitation", but I notice, cheekily,
Your lack of struggle.
You always said you loved empowering things you
Desired.
Am I just a Hand, then, after all, shifting in this Shape with You?
Come! Sway with me, this little while, Sweet, and I will show you the way
Hands Speak with
Silent Sigh.

Black is Beautiful

I thought of a bloke from Cross Harbour, whose "sentence", it seems, wasn't glee;
His main fault? A knowledge of barbers, and living that idea of "Free".
With shares and his bust, I confess great more trust,
Cause he said , "You can break me, not bow me."

Breathed

What are these stars, rocks of glint and glimmer, stolen from your memory of love,
Whirling in the distance;
Flint and flight, of substance, and shimmer, and shaking;
Like touch upon touch, when Michaelangelo was touched so, and awakened, Blinking;
Brightness and born, alive to self
and met,
Awash in notes of then, and this, and though;
Sweet sweat, and sway, of Float and Feather,
Arising and arisen
Within and Without gaze,
Forgotten and Begotten, and Made
Real, from this small finger print in the Earth,
Pressed for a moment, with a sigh, by a kind Hand,
Remembering substance, and, softly stroking the
Silence of it,
Quietly speaking Earth again
Into herself's eyes,
Gently gazing back at him,
Softness borne of
Such Great Art,
For his
Completion.

Dawn's Interesting Definition for the Day

Botox: An exchange of cellulite between the depressed and the truly twisted.