One Year!

This coming Monday marks the one year anniversary of meeting Lynne. I'm actually off to the Out of The Blue Gallery, where the meeting took place, five minutes from now to meet with her. I'll be offering her the poem below when we're done with friends tonight.

Lynne and I have been through a lot this past year. And while Lynne has been moving in a particular direction long before she met me, I think a large part of where I am now comes from knowing her. I hope the poem below (which I'm still editing and therefore might not have up past Monday) is a suitable token of appreciation.

For Lynne, On Mistaking The Date
of Our First Meeting Anniversary

I must have tried to give more purpose
to the night of July Fourth,
when people can look up
and know that no rocket
has chosen them for collateral.
They stare without even the need
for an ultravision, photo-flash view
and somehow are reminded of bravery.

Tonight, on the roof,
many spectacles before us,
I could play Vulcan,
turn your flickering hair
quickly in my fingers
to make a fiery whirl
the harbor dwellers would squint at
to prove to themselves they saw it.

Instead, I want to reach up,
defy laws of space and sight,
and pick a fleeting hot bouquet
that, though dripping in light,
will not overwhelm your strands.

But these spectacle satellites
we see and do not see,
they are not ours, no matter what alphabet
has been etched on them,
their allegiance only to flair or impact.
Maybe it's better to wish myself
into tearless granite,
to protect you from a heated lash
in an embrace I couldn't feel.

No. To wish for explosions
is to wish for escape,
to deny that I look in your eyes
and divine none of the future
beyond the first step downstairs.