To My Son

You are a very special person with many gifts that other people don't have. You're brave and strong and talented. Many weaker people are drawn to this, and you will find it hard to resist their need for help, or shelter within the circle of your light.
But be careful not to mistake wanting to help someone, for love. Feeling sympathy, or empathy for a weaker, less able person, isn't love. I don't mean that you shouldn't care for these people and help them where you can, but that is a different relationship from love.
You can't love a person you can't trust. Think about what that would be like, to live your life partnered to a person you can't trust. How would you leave them with your children? Your belongings? Think what a heavy load that would become. Think what damage that would do to your relationships with friends and family who are important to you.
For love to succeed and flourish you need to find a person who holds a balance with you. Someone who has an equal personal power and can contribute equally to your relationship. I don't mean money or belongings. I'm not talking about worldly things, but about spiritual things.
It won't be easy to find someone who equals and balances you, because you are such a strong person, with such a beaming light. But you will find that person eventually, and it will be well worth the wait. In the meantime, continue to work on yourself as you are, and grow the beautiful person you are becoming.

The Lawnmower Man

In the shower she sings
a la de da song
like a happy child.

Her house is flooded
with light, and the fragrance
of fresh cut grass
floats through the open windows

from the man who leaves their cuddle
of sheets every Saturday morning now
to mow the lawn.

check out this page

when you have time for some browsing. Fantastic art ...

http://beinart.org/artists/

Rainscent

You tell me the smell of rain
is bacteria called actinomycetes.

But that doesn't explain
the sensation of earth exhaling,

the release of exhaustion from green,
and the replenishment of blossom.

It doesn't account for the spears of plant
rushing to collide with plumptious drops

and the fragrant floral streamers
interfacing with the breeze.

It doesn't describe how the scent
allows us to step for a moment

off the treadmill of black furry bodies
and pink flickering tails

to remember the exhale of God
in our nostrils.

Imaginary Kittens

When she was a child
she played with imaginary kittens.
She'd bring them to show you
in carefully cupped palms-
such a beautiful child.

Rosy Dawn, my mother called her,
always had the light in her,
like sun lifting gold
amid pink drifts of cloud
above the shining sea.

She married a silent man-
never uses two words
when one will do.

I remember him when he was a boy
she says. We went to school together
and I've known him all my life.

He'd take my hand to help me up a hill,
and whispered to me when my knickers
accidentally flashed from beneath
a too-short, hand-me-down skirt.

I fell in love, she said.
I don't think many people
get that in their lives.

As she watches him rise
and leave the group of people
laughing and talking round the table,
wander off down the garden alone,

she holds the sun off the horizon
in the final moments of pansy-eyed dusk
with all the tenacity of a mother
for her last scratchy kitten.

woman

a construction of ladders
and high-heeled posture
identity lost
in claymation
she

sky

dives

into the red-blooded mirror



*picture by Paris Wells

Global Finance

basketball globe
spun on your finger

take the fall of money
from your tiny vault

watch it bounce ...
bounce away

there's no recovery
on a court without boundaries

earth and sky have mottled
to a single shade

with both goals invisible
indivisible

buggery bollocks

Chris, did you post something a while back about the technical/chemical name for that smell when it rains?

my latest publication:

http://inthefray.org/content/blogcategory/17/230/