“There’s no one like you,”
she whispered, turning away.
The leaves are flying,
rattling soft like small bones,
raining through the sun-out, sun-in light.
Their mother-trees kept them
tied to their twigs
in cold weeks,
to mend a summer-drought.
“Where are you? How is it you’re here,
and not? Why do I love you?”
she dreamed.
Somewhere, near you,
flowers are sharing themselves
with reflected light, odorous,
bright, and sleepy-sweet.
A Spanish word is softer: olor.
There’s a type of sherry with a dark taste,
long-aged, called oloroso.
Las plantas de tu (ya su, mera love) país
son muy olorosas.
Your winters are promises
of sweating and brown skin.
“Late November’s cold is greyish-clear,
like glass.
Do you still dance? Or swim?
Just now a dog is moaning
about missing owners, praying
for their safe return, crying
that she was left behind.
The Mumbai dogs, whom I love
because they sing near you,
tell me about what touches you,”
she said.
I’m healing.
Sickness made a distance between me and life.
In the void were possibilities.
My eyes are closing.
If I don’t allow them to,
I’ll cry, my retinas will detach, my lungs will drown,
my heart will stop.
You’ve given me all I needed
to make sense out of experience.
I can watch Emma Thompson act,
know what she’s doing wrong
and the probable why,
and enjoy the experience, as I used to.
Watching films now, I look at cloth a lot, and at light.
My hands know how things would feel,
how a needle would work the material, going in,
my fingers feel each weave.
I remember how we used to be
all sharply-pressed,
and now we’re not.
I don’t mourn a thing that’s changed,
except for missing loves.
Everything else cycles in and out
and in again,
the same and new.
You are my love forever.
I lose all grace when I face you with this,
I become a stumbling girl.
All art is about love;
and love is an art.
I’m still trying to learn how to do it.
© Nov ’10 Heather Quinn, all rights reserved
