Found One...

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Child's Song w/ Photography by Lizz Swenson

Child's Song

I lie in my bed thinking of you,
just two doors down.

You!
So small,
so new to this world.
You are alone in your dreams,
no warmth
but your own.

By my side your father, my lover snores.
Faraway he roams
from you,
faraway he roams
from me...
this stranger at my side!

While he sleeps,
I am fitfully aware, awake...
with thoughts of you,
just two doors down.

I could go to you, now.
Throw back the covers without a sound.
Take you up into my arms, tell you that I am here
for you.
But, I hesitate... something closes in me.
And I wait silently, impatiently for understanding.
Who has time for this? One-o-clock,
tick-tock, tick-tock
and
then suddenly something flies open
and now I see!
That I am the one alone,
there is no one
but me.

By my side your father, my lover snores.
Faraway, he roams
from you,
faraway he roams
from me.
Who is this stranger by my side sleeping?

Shhhhhhhhhhh.

The Gorge: A Poem by Gregory Askew

The Gorge

I know the place where they found you
Not the exact spot, of course
But the general area,
Set between foothills of the mountains to the east:
The chill wood gorge
Where in spring
Rock walls of slate weep tendrils of moss
Through the residues of the winter’s spoils,
The peat-brown mud that renders treacherous
the inclines and moldering surfaces along the trail
Where the brooklet song of the wren
Tumbles over gnarled roots and stone
Past salamanders curled beneath logs sodden with rot

Edging an inverted pine precipitously
and on to the river below
Bird vying for an ear
over the susurrus of eddies and chutes
Did you hear him?

Where in summers past reckless bathers,
Harried to the hills by the city’s heat,
courted a fate same as yours
In the deep narrows where the waters pitch and bend

Where now, I imagine, those waters have since calmed,
The rains having been mild the past weeks,
And the fallen leaves of oak and fir softening the earth
Absorbed the sounds of red squirrel sprinting tree to tree
And the violence of the man who took your life.

Punctuations: A Poem by Gregory Askew

Punctuations

They say the end is coming

But what if the end has come

and come again?

What if worlds fall and rise anew

about us every day?

Are we ever prepared?

Are we ever?

There…

a stranger comes upon us

at once familiar

at once known

with a form and a course

as that which greets us

assured and assuring

in the glance of a passing window

and yet…

that glance those eyes

and upon a sudden

the world falls away

for a moment

the world falls away

before the question upon which it rests

the world

there’s nothing more

and then the moment passes

…then there’s something

Or…

We grasp the hand of our lover

there it rests in ours ours

resting

a common gesture

taking the hand of a lover

and there it rests ours

assured and assuring

and yet…

that hand resting

a sudden weight

a new gravity possessed

and for a moment

the world falls away

falls away

for a moment

before the question upon which it rests

the world the hand

resting

there’s nothing more

and then the moment passes

…then there’s something

Punctuations