2 New Poems

Smoothing Stones

A ripple is an echo by other names,

in other tongues, other epochs;

it is a chosen stone, careful dropped

as quill ink on fresh-printed parchment,

but lesser permanent, lesser meant,

blind but to its writer, by terms.

Listen closely, it can be heard:

the hesitance in verbage of tea-time blandness,

though content with flattened verse, it stirs

of deeper longing in private hours,

it cries between pine needles' space

to come back to spaces where

you and I ripple upon each other.

Or is it echo?

Could Be All Yours

If I could freeze clocks on you,

the glacial porcelain facades of

Swiss maker's hands could finger-count

all hours running out my youth in cold,

in unaired hotel rooms, in library benches,

I'd settle on love's birth in a single metaphor:

you were reading Kundera

in a room of light banter's banality,

every impulse to crafter's wine,

dusty bookshops, thesis work in

the Sunday pubs of suburban London.

Still, the bottle dust, the record books,

the hard-parcel pieces, the Guardian default news-tickers

give way to clicking the same three Chait articles

to smirk slightly at their headlines.

In other terms,

to lonesome.