In the Company of Poets
I feel as if we’ve sprouted
like twin stalks in the
sugar cane fields or that
our mouths share the sap
running in bark-stripped
banana trees.
I watch luna moths
and swallowtails fly
from leaf to leaf tasting
the scents of our longing,
our webbedness of words,
our comet trails to dreams,
echoes of the voices that
buzz in the backs of our minds
and this disconnect we have with
a paved and toll-boothed reality.
I know your soul in ways
I cannot know anyone else,
from the twists your feelings take
to those sudden dance steps
that come at you with a
sense of inevitability though
you’ve never felt them before,
how you move to them and
change your shoes in the middle
of the night and emerge a
different person in the morning.
I know how ecstatic joys can
melt nerve endings and leave behind
only charred and sweet smelling ashes,
how the darkness can turn heavy and
grab your feet like quicksand bogs.
I jump into your word worlds,
stilt walk through your images
as if skating on the facets
of diamonds while my body
sings yes and my mind
tries to swallow you.
© Zen Oleary
June 16, 2004
