Tidepool

11.22.13

Cars skidding by through rain on the street
woke me.  Unless there's a lion on the end
of the bed, I'm not supposed to feel like this.
Everyone has a god in the end.  Predators shout
about themselves from everywhere on earth.  But
at the bottom of the food chain, life can be quiet.
Rain on your small patch of moss. 
Rain in your small tidepool.  Look how
the saltwater laps against the old rocks.
You know this corner of the world.  For now,
it is yours.  Gills or lungs, breathe it.

The field

11.7.13

Glaze gold of six city
buildings against solid blue clouds
at sunset, the whole thing looking as though you
could peel it back, and behind it find
of course
something less dazzling . . .

but you always have to pick the scab.
There are excuses, yes,
the one time you found just puckered skin beneath
as if it had been waiting for you all along,
fresh as forgiveness,
the exception that proved the rule.
Your heart pounding with something
that wasn't quite relief
or disappointment, you tripped
into the kitchen to pluck a glossy orange off the counter,
started the peel with your teeth,
and that bitter pith 
was its own kind of vengeance.

To this day, you quiver with the certainty of it.
Over the next cliff
the parachute will deploy.

And you'll touch your feet down
in the dewy field for which
you were always meant.