Adoptive

You join your community in which
I have no part, try though I may to be
At one with you. Of course I shouldn't bitch;
I knew this was your own community,
One I was both by choice and inclination
Apart from and unlikely to join in;
Nor do I feel significant temptation
To come to it. Still I admit it's been
Hard, and will be harder, to observe
You make your way away from me into
A place I have no place; not that I swerve
From seeing this, for we both know I knew
This would be so before it was begun.
But every time feels like the hardest one.

Oak Street Beach

There is a blocked-off street without a name
Down which, without much thought, I almost turned.
It seemed unlike the others: wild, not tame,
Possessing that which they, perhaps, had spurned.
Yet as I reached my hand out to remove
The barriers that kept me on my path
A thought arose within me to reprove
That course, though more with pity than with wrath:
"Consider whether those who came before
Perhaps knew what they did in shutting this;
It's possible of course, that you know more,
And may find something they were wont to miss,
But likely?" And I stared down that dim street
And pondered it, and beat a swift retreat.

6 Jackson Park Express

When there were three at once just sitting there
I thought it might have been a bus convention
But when all three are moving, I must stare
And wish they'd stage a transit intervention.
I missed three buses of the selfsame type
All running as if nothing out of place
Were happening, as if their time were ripe
And they were on the way to their home base
Perfectly on schedule. How can three
Be unified in what should be but one?
I cannot find a reason they should be
Crammed in a single slot, except for fun:
To see how we, the riding public, act
When two are empty and the other packed.

Baked

Everything around me is a mess
A cataclysm of surrounding waste;
And yet I count the day a sweet success
Because of what remains for us to taste.
It is a rare day when I am not glad
We baked so many random fluffy things,
Moreover, I believe I would be sad
Without the joy that looking at them brings,
For you have left, and I have now to clean
A million dishes - or at least, them all.
So looking at the food instead may mean
That I have simply found a way to stall:
Yet that's not it, for in the food I see
Our solid instance of creative glee.

Vacuum Tube

I feel so very void of everything
Like all of it drained out of me at once;
I am not sure that I know anything,
And if you asked me, I would prove a dunce.
I breathe, of course, or else would have no life,
I think enough to write this with my thumbs.
But where I'm normally sharp as a knife
My mind grows woozy and my spirit numbs.
The day is purposeless, and all adrift;
Nothing except existence keeps on going.
Nothing I try seems to provide a lift,
Nor can I find a way to keep life flowing
Except to think of you. And when you're here
That, despite everything, will bring me cheer.

Uplift

Even on days when I feel pointless, you
Are there within my mind to comfort me.
I hope you feel the same, for in my view,
There is no better love-security
Than feeling from afar the other's voice
Uplifting what had been depressed and low;
And if I had, somehow, to make a choice
I think I'd keep that feeling and let go
Much of what most philosophers call love
(Not that I do not value that as well,
But merely see it as an instance of
The feeling that produces this). I tell
Myself that you are there for me, and pray
You tell yourself the same in some small way.

Incompleteness

I paint poor pictures of my precious love
In watercolors weakly washed with phrases
Each phrase a failed, yet free expression of
The liquid love lapped in my constant gazes.
See in my eyes each effort's true conceit;
Each longing look will linger on your face,
And if my heart has help, our eyes will meet
Such that you see my sense, and will embrace
The meaning, not mere merit, of my words,
And take the treasured of my heart
Into your own. Yet yearning comes in herds
And words, though witty, wean only a part
Of what, in deep devotion, dearness feels:
So rightly read the rest of my appeals.

Visitations

These empty and unhanded hours I
Spend almost void in order to see you
Are given value and importance by
The knowledge that you joy to see me too.
When I am travelling this far to see
The pure delight of you, I am twice cheered:
Once by the thought of how you will greet me,
The second by how very much endeared
You are to me, and therefore how I feel
When, having overcome the distance travelled,
I see your face, whose instant soft appeal
Makes all my toil seem to have unravelled
As if the trip were instant. When I'm there
Your present love becomes my only care.

All in the Timing

I see no reason why I should desist
From praise, although the prize has been achieved.
No barriers unto my praise resist,
And what I claim is readily believed,
Therefore rejoice, and let the open sound
Of praise believed redouble in the air!
When unresisted, praises should abound
And not dry up just as the way grows fair.
So hear of me, that still am filled with love
For her that now does not dispute my praise
The lowest and most basic instance of
How she is lovely, and delights my days:
Her arms are where I know that I belong
In her embrace there can be nothing wrong.

Porter

It hardly matters what my body does
(Except it matters very much indeed)
But in the large sense, it dos not, because
My soul is only willing, now, to feed
Upon your love, and therefore you may read
The meaning of my whole entirety
Within my face: the longing and the need,
And love greatest of all. There you may see
That which has come, in time, to define me:
The way my heart and mind have joined together
To wish for you, and how incredibly
Happy you make me. So ignore the weather,
Whether it's too darn hot or there's a chill:
You are the high desire of my will.