New Commission...

I have a new commission to read at my friends' wedding in December...and they're giving me free rein to compose! (The trust is staggering!) So I'll be posting lots of ideas between now and then, and I could really use your help deciding which ones to show to the happy couple as potential choices. Below are four ready-composed efforts that I might consider. More will appear on the blog as I have time to add them. Please feel free to comment. Or if you like something I post elsewhere as an option, let me know...just remember, choose appropriately...it's a church wedding... ;-)


Talking

Hush.
Fall silently now
among our clear depths of endless time.
We have forever
to do more than this.

Lean your forehead on mine
and hold my eyes,
for this moment
this
instant
just let me look at you
and let us
touch.

If I did only this
for a thousand nights more;
became breathless with it;
I could not tire.
For each time my soul lays
eyes on you
I am astounded
anew.
And I need no food, no water,
only my soul's sight of you,
and to touch;
and I am sustained.

Hush.
Let our souls make endless exchanges,
far removed of courteousy,
and know this,
my love;
we will have forever
for talking.


Sand

In the end
it took only you to show me
that sand allowed to slip through your fingers
doesn't always blow away on the wind.
If there is no breeze
and no will to roam
it falls calmly in a pile at your feet
and is happy to be there.
It is happier still to be swept up, scooped up,
into a bottle or an hourglass-
To be confined inside a molten, cooled,
version of itself
only to be sure that its every grain
may be carried daily in your breast pocket
as close as possible...

And even though loose sand gets everywhere
inside the folds of clothes and sticks
to your skin and hair
It took only you to show me
how content I can be that it's there.

Even though it rubs now and then
gets in my eyes
and makes my skin sore
I couldn't stand
not to be covered in sand
or to leave the house without
An hourglass
In my pocket
Anymore.


While We Were Dancing

There was a time
I would not have thought our ship
could sail so long and smooth
A time, long ago, I dared hope
But didn't know...
And I would have thought, if it would come
Then it would come to me after you
In a dimly-lit piano bar over
midnight Sea-Breezes and Long Island Iced Tea
And the touch of a hand still cool
As the water-crystals
Beading
On my glass...

But it passed, that time,
and as I thought it, it was not to be.

It came though, just the same
as I had always hoped it would.
But love and the precious knowledge
of
its
Ever-presence
Came quietly to me.
No drinks, no lights, no music
Only you
And it came to me while we were dancing
In the silence, with the stars, in the garden,
Under a winter-iced moon.