Wildflower

I.

You hated losing control of your life to strangers.
That time you fell in love, it was a bookfair and
a pair of nerdy glasses gazed right at you. She
wasn’t a chick, more a wildflower growing
by the roadside hoping to be picked up
by a good guy seeking flowers for his mom.
Her hands were soft, yet her heart callused
from fighting too many inner battles.
You wanted a rose, nothing short
of spectacular, so left her wilting to the dusk.

II.

How easy it is to be lonely and not know it.

Take aching shoulders, the fierce but subdued
longing for a pair of soft hands to rub those
hard rocks into cushions. The heart sighs on
its long flute of silence, wishing for the face
of a loved one to be the moon.

Perhaps she was that stranger you unwittingly
walked away from. Wildflowers swayed by the roadside;
mimosa brushed your soles giving up their dew to you.

How easy to miss all these: the phone call you rejected
in favor of dinner outside, cold shots at a bar hoping
against hope to get someone’s phone number
slipped in your breast pocket.

III.

Cats. Stray cats. See how they run
or reproach you with narrowed eyes as you
approach them. You judge your self-worth
by the way each stray flees or stays, trembling
like hamsters as you caress it close to its heart
canvassing for soft affections there.

How to Settle Into a Room

Put some music in it. Anything –

relieve the bass of your speaker
silent in its corner, the walls weeping
for some classical, some blues.
Chopin never works; metal, sometimes.
Violin pieces soothe a violent mood -
the fire burning cities through the veins. Stray

thoughts bought by the wind urge your
feet to dance, to drum, go somewhere
then somewhere. Eyes linger on imagined seas –
ripples are moods becalmed, inner storm
tamed by rising, then dipping waves of

song. Toes wriggle once more their futile
attempt at flight; the hour inexorably escapes
no matter mind’s chosen escapades.

So you choose to trace the light curves
of wind, slide fingertip over your lips teasing
that caged smile into being. The horizons
glimmer beyond the window broken
by construction noises. Like freshly-caught
fish the feet turn still, tamed by a song.