Clouds
Thin like our wedding sheets
Thin like the nightgown I last saw you in
Thin
Like you hair as it fell though my fingers
Or the night before the dawn I gave you to
Thin like your fair but aging skin
That Magical beauty
And Horrifying frailness

Clouds
Drift slowly
Across
A daytime moon
And I'm alone
Drifting too
Lost in thoughts of you wrapped
In hospital sheets

Clouds
Intangible wisps of steam
Clinging to a particle of dust
The spilt ash the wind
Carried away

-Chase

You are not very much like a shepherd,
guarding the images and metaphors
and keeping them in line.

You are more like the sheep,
who's wandered away into a forest.
After a few hours, dusk settles
and you roll yourself tight
into a ball of wool, shivering
at the cold and the howling of wolves.

But it's not too long
until the metaphor comes,
calling your name,
carrying a thick rod.
He'll bring you home
to the other sheep,
where, hopefully, you'll stay
after he breaks your legs.

Waters are coming to fill the room and drown us out.
We cannot be any more than we are,
and so we cannot be anymore.
But the ceiling is high above,
and there is lots of furniture.
There are no doors, so we board up the windows.
The dinner chairs turn into cotton stuffing foam.
Water seeps bluely onto the maple-stained floor.
I build a boat and rise to the top,
where I sit on crystal chandeliers and hope it subsides.
The room is near filled to the brim,
but the walls grow too.
Floors are mere memories, belonging to the deep.
I sit and recall the day before in the gift shop.

I looked for you there,
where the porcelain figures sat in the window sill,
on sale now.
You were out sipping wine a la café and laughing.
I had made you a painting.
It was a teddy bear in a puddle.
But you had gone away,
and all I found was a wisp of a woman
and her daughter.
The two had raised the price of those
porcelain figures,
So I couldn't buy them.
I couldn't afford those dreams.

A giant razor was spinning in a dungeon.
The ground was granite and the wheel was iron.
Between the spokes were dum-dums and bon-bons.
Children stood around the wheel;
fear kept them away.
But desire made sure they'd stay.
So I risked it all and grabbed a few, to give to them.
What worth was my hand in face of their dreams?
If I could no longer dream of hope,
who was I to deny the hopes of my dreams?

A blank page is scary.
It stretches to fill your vision,
As if to prove that there isn’t anything else but its whiteness.
It mocks you.

It reminds you of the quiet that comes when your fan is broken,
And you’re lying in bed at night,
With silence so thick that it makes you wonder if you have anything to say at all.

Take heart.

Silence is nothing. You have only to speak, and it is gone.
And the whiteness of a blank page can be chased off
With simple lines of ink.

Bless you child - be gone your fears
Let them fade into dusk as rain at dawn
Forevermore let echoes be your song.

I asked him next, I asked him then
What is the truth to the story of men?
What is our reason, and what is our rhyme?
And is there a purpose to earth, space, or time?

He said, "Do not worry."
He said, "Stay your fear."
I told Him, "I'm sorry,
But You'll have to be more clear."

I forgets U once
Twice, thirty times a day
But I never forgets US
US skies doubles behind a boat
As august dawn creeps through trees
And warms the water US skims across
US walks through corn fields covered in snow
US points to where D - E - e and R
Huddle at night for warmth
And when I thinks of US
I remembers U
Pulls out I's cell phone and scrolls
Name by name
Through a list of temporal friends
No lovers, no family, no U
Cause I doesn't know U
U is just another face in the subway
Another car on the freeway
Another jogger on the walkway
And all I knows is the meaning
U and I make among other letters
And so afraid
I puts I's cell phone away
In that moment aware
Of its inadequacy
Of its inability
Aware that I and U can never be US
U waiting for I
Who is unable to be S
That great transformation needed
So U and I can be
Harmoniously conjoined in beautiful meaning

I forgets U
The friend in a distant land
U, The teacher who made poetry alive
U, The Sister, the Brother
The Mother, the Father
The letter caught and forgot
Between T and V

I forgets U
But must it also be pointed out
How I longs for U
And how I longth for thee

-M. Chase Whittemore

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