Across the Atlantic (March 2007)

I took a shot at a sestina for a class!

Walking alley after alley, I rest each bone and limb
upon smooth countertops, sheltered from shaken skies.
I am half inclined to give in, but I sit waiting
unable to believe I am an ocean away.
Breathing this infusion of warm java air,
I write the stories of my lover

which is a peculiar thing, because a story of a lover
is forgotten as fast as a stray leaf forgets the limb
from which it sprung. In cold air,
the heavens lend watercolors to their skies
dabs of asphalt that are swept away
by the roving wind, forever waiting.

In this town it seems as if everyone is waiting.
For news of an old acquaintance, a lost lover
an estranged relative, a friend gone away
for whom they would give any limb
to find and hold again beneath these skies.
There is loss, a song of sadness in the air.

And life itself, is but the intake of air
abruptly, or in fluidity, always waiting
for fate to reveal what’s held for us in the skies.
A bleak future, a child, a lover
loss of life or pride or loss of limb
until the drifts of time take all away.

My pen scratches paper and scribes away
pulling words of life and strength out of air,
speaking as if it were in fact, a limb
of my own. It knows nothing of waiting
pallid nights for the return of a lover
but it writes truthfully, of sin and sunken skies.

I know what is to be because I have seen it in the skies.
I will crumple these words, I will wander away,
I will never find this pretentious lover,
the lurid scent that wafts in the air
with last night’s dream. The clock is not waiting.
My heart aches through my every limb.

So I face the skies, into the English winter air,
press on through streets, away where life is waiting
for me to see with the eyes of a lover, and heal an unfamiliar limb.