Tango: A Prologue

There wasn't really any reason for leaving at that moment. The sun shone high above them and the wind had remained light throughout their visit. The waves were calm and no one was tired or hungry or even whining. But...she packed it all up anyway: the remnants of Kentucky Fried Chicken with biscuits, each leg with a chunk of meat still clinging to the bone and three half drunk Sierra Mists watered down with melted ice and one still full. These she dumped in the nearby metal mesh garbage can much to the delight of the waiting sea gulls. They dove into the trash to retrieve the delicacies before she was even a decent distance away from them.

She was done. Capping the fallen sunscreen she shoved the towels into her bag. She didn't expect their trip to work any miracles, but if only for the children, she'd expected him to show up. It was so lonely sitting on the blanket watching Stephan and Melanie run across the beach. They knew she wasn't happy and kept their distance. Even now as she waved to them, beckoning for their departure they tripped back along the beach turning their faces to the waves. She sank onto the sand and lay the folded umbrella across her lap. Maybe he was waiting until after lunch.

...Old Starlet

A tightness grips the back
of her neck
a vice-like grip
invades
her thoughts, stopping
all melody

the song is silenced.
choked by her own
perseverance

there can be
no preservation
of organic harmonies that will
be smothered
before leaving her lips but find
hope
in her fingertips

Escape

A blue black night
starlight on the eastern edge
she cannot see

pine needles sticky
sharp
marking passing cheeks

a call in the darkness one
to another...

she runs

Remembrance

Who knew the tides would turn
washing me ashore in a different place
where I could be outside
looking in

and inside looking out and on
and over
all at once.

Who knew that I'd evolve and find my way
through uncertainty and mortality
only to dream of finding my way
back to the time

when fear paralyzed action.

When the list was endless
and the contracts remained
unsigned.

Beginning to Spin

Spiraling is how I best describe my life. There are many passions that motivate the circular motion. Directions I feel I must journey. They are not meant to be sequential but rather, they are concurrent, continuous and connected. Journeys with others, where we dance together for a few steps and then move on into the light or behind the curtain only to meet again later in the second act, are those that reconnect me to the earliest versions of the spiral. It is by this new connection that an old journey can be revisited and new lines drawn.

At some point the lines drawn in the dirt were straight. Start...work...dream...create...work...finish, but true reflection reveals that the ending never truly arrives. Never. Never is forever. Forever is a circle and a moving circle picks up velocity, causes great wind tunnels and spins off into space. A tornado creates its own life force and travels independently of the surrounding landscape My feet still touch the ground, so I have a long way to go. So I spin; child to friend to lover to child to mother to child to lover to dancer to writer to dreamer to mourner to child to dreamer and dreamer and lover and mother and friend and...so I spin.