sometimes, longing

sometimes longing looks like obsession and takes the curvatures of long lazy shallow rivers crowned in curling greenery, fingers of trees reaching out to skim the surface of brown waters as a lover reaches out and runs it’s fingers through the hairs of one beloved, dripping poisonous snakes and rare neon blossoms onto and into the press of time that lollygags its way through my memories and sticks to me like humidity left behind. sometimes longing plunges its roots deep into the earth and climbs towards the heavens and a child climbs up it and sits among wide waxen leaves cradled in the gentle arms of a hospitable mother, who offers up blooms sealed in velvet to press to her daughter’s lips, that when opened are as big as her child’s head, fragrant, creamy, professions of affections, confessions of a need to have her there, to be a part of her, to be embedded and rooted in her memory and her daughter’s daughters’ memories. sometimes longing blooms a thousand miles away in curtains of lavender and wafting breezes of wisteria framing a wood that is biding its time to take back the earth silly humanity thinks is theirs, when everything is wild and slightly crazed with a need to decorate itself in some bright finery to catch the attentions of the calling mate to bring newness and wash away some cold winter when the sharp air stung lungs and numbed hearts and we huddled around a hearth for a moment and were completely together. sometimes longing is the city under the sea brass shouting winds embracing the sensuality of a funk and the sweet piles of confectioner’s sugar addictions as much as cocaine to the junkie, the cochon to the gastronome, the musical mistress the artistic melange of spanish french indian black white master slave and the driving drumming rhythms of sundays freed round intonations of yat smattering eardrums and the arms of a kindred spirit who knows all your pains and joys and sorrows and you know theirs and to be there near them quiet is a joy and a privilege and a constant reminder that this world is bigger than our longing, sometimes and small enough to find each other, and maybe ourselves within it.