four seasons ...

four seasons ... she wanders through the forest in her wedding dress of snowy frost and enters by a side door where she knows he will be waiting and as she crosses the threshold she wrings the cold from her hair leaving snowdrop petals of ice on the carpet and she stands there in front of his clenched fists that slowly open like dogwood and his long fingers begin to peel away the layers of her frozen life until at last she stands naked before him waiting with a slight shiver as his eyes map the topography of her body the hills and the valleys the crags and the crevices of her warming flesh until at last he seems content if not surprised and he covers her with a blanket of soft foliage and greenery from the meadow bathing her at last in the warmth of his embrace even as the crows scatter past the barren stalks of corn and colourful leaves fill the sky Copyright © Kennedy James, 2015. All rights reserved.

circles of time ...

circles of time ... the girl waiting to become a woman smiled as she watched me from across the room her clear blue eyes stuttering in anticipation like the hands on an ancient hallway clock counting down the seconds the minutes the hours the days the months and the years that she had endured to arrive at this single axis in the unending circles of time and as she peeled the bed covers aside i said a silent prayer that i might not falter through the rise of night and the urgency of desire to be the one for her but i hesitated a second a minute an hour a day a month and a year too long and what might have been slipped by in an instant sending her drifting into shadows with only a final whispered thought that every moment embraces every other moment before it and defines all the moments yet to come Copyright © Kennedy James, 2015. All rights reserved.

once certain, twice removed ...

once certain, twice removed ... i miss my youth the prairie roads carving poetry in fields of dappled gold a summer's harvest reaching heavenward to the toppling clouds of a never-ending sky where every imagined beast or beauty was caught in the reflection of the big rivers that poured like holy wine into a young boy's veins a sacrament of sorts you'd think but more and more a tattered collection of memories not quite lost but lost all the same i miss the danger of falling in love with a perfect stranger unexpectedly slipping into my life of imperfection i miss the jarred butterfly pandemonium and the nervous excitement of hands wandering across the skin of unknown bodies the silly giggles of encouragement and even the whispers of hesitant rebuke i miss the softest cheek against my cheek when lips wander to lips to share the breath of love and breathe the pulse of life from heart to heart blending the two into one i miss the slow waking from solitude into arms that wrap across my shoulders and coax my body from the cold and carry me into the warmth of knowing that dreamers live lives asleep i miss the missing the times apart the you there and the me somewhere unknown so high above the world in vacant night skies the time or distance or both that divides improbable lovers from one another the words and promises that reach across crackling telephone conversations of wounded longing i miss the purpose the obvious reason for being who i am that i see in a knowing look from bright expectant eyes or that i feel in the soft fingers that brush my hair back and away from my brow but mostly i miss every day when i might have said something hopeful and was silent Copyright © Kennedy James, 2015. All rights reserved.