Red lights flaring like Roman candles at empty intersections. Headlights wanding like blind men’s sticks

Motoring solo through the immense, silent, parted heart of the forest of Chinon. The birdsong air

While countries, armies and ideologies battle, bees make honey. Butterflies float, and drink the nectar from gently open flowers.

Fog pours in through the half-open windows. Fills our small bedroom by the bay. Pools

All the way. Your eyes, senses, sensibilities. Fill them

When the Moon moves between our Sun, Earth and up-raised eyes, through the long-held breath of our wisdom-keepers,

At precisely 9.25. When the moon, the first and most abundant one of the new year,

Those many, sung and unsung, who gave themselves, often gave up their lives, to fight, in wars,

It was a wet signature. Full of emotion. Full of eroticism. Still wet, with sweat

It arrives on a warm white cloud. It arrives on soft rolls of ocean waves along a sand pebbled shore. It arrives on a bed

Yes. And the rivers. The wind and the rain. The wildflowers. The marshes

Circa ‘50s Wichita. Your mother, Gladys, going for her blue rinse,

A frosted cake layered with cars and people, rosetted with gulls, points out toward quiet afternoon islands.

Who wore a green plastic visor the color of a ginger ale bottle. Who had a raspy voice and Charles Coburn kind of face. A forever bachelor

What we belong to. What we can point to out there; around us. And what a singular gift. Our innate sentience.