the most beautiful place we know

coming upon home. like a white noise secret. like sun dancing in peripherals, making eyes shake and horizons flail, home is a pentatonic syllable: a tangent ripping through the straightest line. a call and repsonse and a flickering-flame heartbeat in a quiet hour. home blows a breeze through my nylon eyelashes, dips my spine in a warm salt bath. home is a silken cord, a radiant octave, and all the white keys  to the dark, wayward finger drums. home base. how large is home, in a full-moon sky?  if you told me, I could find my way to you. 

Italian sun stretches like taffy; breaks clean like a cold egg, sugars a city with the finest grain. and like a doused fledgling, your heart awakens with a start, trembles vigorously to shake the drops, and chirps louding, trusting and needing.

A lunar response to Giacomo Leopardi’s "Night Song of A Wandering Shepherd of Asia" My dear traveler; my wandering poet, with questions more endless still, than the eternal roads I wander --  you ask me of my path, wonder if my bright face conceals a world of weary, if my illumination of the valleys I roam exhausts my celestial soul. And in the life of a shepherd, you see my equal: a life of nothing more than the petty governance of a bestial flock, in company with the streams, the grass: a lone, fastidious toiler for a fruitless end. Each night I rise, to fill the sky, to bide the time until the sun. Surrounded by sparks in the infinite air, I watch my human flock as weary heads feel their ignoble weight, tepid hearts contemplate gloomy burdens, spinning minds present somber questions to my shabby reflection, begging that I offer them the “why” of things, believing all the while that my unearthly answer

I crave moments not of cut gemstone but of pressed linens; of starched comfort seducing frayed nerves with blessedly cool mint-on-the-tongue static cling. tell me when you get there – to that cramped kitchen the ceilings too high the walls too plastered with nonsense poster children scattered images framed words we talk of maybe love snap peas on the table we’re all too sweaty but the night air needs our tepid flesh craves our sticky pores riled hair creased knees that collect perspiration tsunamis between our joints. we’ll rest here a while collect the day tomorrow and speak wonders in between