Bright With Dew
I promise that there will always be dew
and I shall touch you, petal by petal,
smiling as they open, one by one;
and I shall love always.
You are
all of the all of the flower.
I promise I will be
fingers nimbly,
kisses again and again.
I promise I will be
eyes in eyes
in every light and darkness,
grinning humbly in the wetness.
I will meet you under the waterfall;
it will just be you and me.
A gentle rain in the day;
a deluge each night;
your dew in the early morning
when my fingers clasp and unclasp
and my lips speak their daily prayers
of you; to you; for you
and my tongue pressed in a ritual
to the petals bright with dew.
Deliberateness
It’s good to step outside
but not too far,
stand on the porch
and look out to near-black sky in daytime,
drops of rain slow and fat and lazy
but not the same way
that you are slow and fat and lazy,
no –
there is a deliberateness to it all,
the way the water falls
like both a cannonball and a caress.
Lights emerge from the dark,
brighten and then disappear
as the cars go back and forth
with their own deliberateness –
an ugly deliberateness,
a deliberateness of ants whose feelers
have gone mad.
There is not much deliberate about us,
slow and fat and lazy,
feeling under our bellies for crumbs.
No kin to the rain that works in uniform,
never thinks about where to land,
it just knows.
You step inside,
shut the door.
The relentless rasp of the rain
falls away to the swirr swirr swirr of the ceiling fan
and your fat slow lazy brain
gets on to forgetting all about what you saw,
what you felt just moments ago.
You leave the rest of the morning to chance.
John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. His first poetry collection from Cajun Mutt Press is now available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C6W2YZDP. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.
I promise that there will always be dew
and I shall touch you, petal by petal,
smiling as they open, one by one;
and I shall love always.
You are
all of the all of the flower.
I promise I will be
fingers nimbly,
kisses again and again.
I promise I will be
eyes in eyes
in every light and darkness,
grinning humbly in the wetness.
I will meet you under the waterfall;
it will just be you and me.
A gentle rain in the day;
a deluge each night;
your dew in the early morning
when my fingers clasp and unclasp
and my lips speak their daily prayers
of you; to you; for you
and my tongue pressed in a ritual
to the petals bright with dew.
Deliberateness
It’s good to step outside
but not too far,
stand on the porch
and look out to near-black sky in daytime,
drops of rain slow and fat and lazy
but not the same way
that you are slow and fat and lazy,
no –
there is a deliberateness to it all,
the way the water falls
like both a cannonball and a caress.
Lights emerge from the dark,
brighten and then disappear
as the cars go back and forth
with their own deliberateness –
an ugly deliberateness,
a deliberateness of ants whose feelers
have gone mad.
There is not much deliberate about us,
slow and fat and lazy,
feeling under our bellies for crumbs.
No kin to the rain that works in uniform,
never thinks about where to land,
it just knows.
You step inside,
shut the door.
The relentless rasp of the rain
falls away to the swirr swirr swirr of the ceiling fan
and your fat slow lazy brain
gets on to forgetting all about what you saw,
what you felt just moments ago.
You leave the rest of the morning to chance.
John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. His first poetry collection from Cajun Mutt Press is now available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C6W2YZDP. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.
