Underneath a Raging Sea

unready

There were politics on tv

in my head, an old western movie

running my favorite scene

repeat-repeat.

in the foreground: my cousin asked me

Do you really think you’re ready to be married?

…

Sao Paulo,

Curtains gently moved with the wind

 standing in the doorway to our balcony

10:00 am sun beating.

her aspen hair

wild with the morning, evening still set in her eyes

she takes a sip from the Arabica roast

and treasures the city view as she always does

children, Football in the streets

then as I yawn, flips her head back to meet me

whispers those few words in her natural speech

(“Ah, meu amor.”)

I’m driven to wonderful insanity

…

somewhere in Galway,

Maybe a cottage outside the city

she’d have something like coastline eyes

(the Bays’ waves crashing in against the Cliffside)

Shades of brown, a whirlwind in the storm-

amongst the blades of green

and paths still new to me

I’d walk with her,

sometimes talk, mostly listen

to the words she’d sing

about the books she’d read

and all her overthetop philosophy

some sorts of Transcendentalism far beyond me.

our life,

our own sort of discontented peacefully.

…

retrieving life back into reality

I forced a simple smile

no, I suppose I am unready  to be married…

I’m still far too engaged in my own many hopeless stories.

fumbling vehemently

morning light coddled the mountain;

an old Indian patterned fleece blanket

wrapped his too frail shoulders-

at 87, December 29th...

that day he looked old,

more so than I’d ever seen

with nothin’ to him

but a cup of coffee

and a stare to the tree’s.

coughing in winter’s seed.

                I’d probably never know what he had on his mind

except a longing for more-

but less

all at the same time..

I mean, he was a simple man

complexities as such I’d couldn’t understand

lived on little.

a laptop, caffeine, scotch,

and words...oh

how he loved his words.

this is how I knew him to be-

was as he is

seriously solemn human.

his past hung between the wrinkles

deep within the pools of tired eyes.

waters where romance would’ve once swam,

a girl I imagined he chased away

(though he’d never directly say)

just brief rants, enough to let on, but not a clue as to more…

a cigar in the air, bedridden, and fumbling vehemently for his glass

“boy,

 love made us beautiful..

but boy, did love make us ugly.

like a woven reverie, or an unspoken memory.”

               

                I heard this phrase many times that winter

up there in his cabin beneath the aspens, and the

falling snow…the house that’d come to be his tomb

that last time I let him to his rest-

with his passing words,

hand on my shoulder, an unquiet mutter

“boy, love made us beautiful,

but boy…”

his eyelids fell for the last time that night

and under a bereft voice-I finished for him

“did love make us ugly…”