exchange was as natural as breathing,
catching phrases as easy as dust …

no. more.

  it was as if the words
were running ahead of us
like impatient children,
   the conversation
   literally gaining a life
                             of its own
  becoming
quicker than we could catch it
lacing zigzag in
  invisible silvers
the cords threading our chests
  and guiding,  like
railroad tracks, the hands of lovers

the fluid passage of ideas
sprawling everywhere before us, breathing:
smoothed out over the grey stroke of the street in a gentle flood


and the two of us
so slow and smooth
just drifting easy

talking too loud  with hands everywhere
gushing free verse poetry
   and stopping to marvel
  at street musicians, the natives,
light pushing in behind
the colors of a tree and making it glow,
how tart yet velvet the wine was

we strolled
over& through

folding it with our mouths,
        the way wine
undresses under a tongue
falls apart like an orange, in sections
and lingers
the shape of its body still pressing
  long after
  a swallow


it seemed i had always known her
oh, all of those fluttering rumbling intuitive grips

and yet!
the joy of discovery,
  of detail:
to marvel as layer by layer was lain
in an autumn evening ~ thick as gel
as soft as her golden eyes ~
  creating  dust
      dirt
the walls of canyons
collecting little by little
aknowing
  the sweetness and vivacity, the passion
  her quiet power
this gathering of stories, and the rivers that carved them