Between the Lines

Dawn before it rained I hung the clothes out on the line, dropped the littlest socks and things at least a dozen times. Between those lines where things get lost in laundry and in people, beneath a sheet I hung atop with billows over steeple. I said it’s hard to sing of hearts without it sounding stale, and yet I pin mine on my sleeve, a target to impale. I’m looking for my strong suit as I’m wading through my clothes. Not guile so much or thicker skin, I wear the clothes I’m born within. To naked eyes and ears and mind, you can tell me anything. I’ll look back and listen close, believing every time. But don’t mistake my fabric for a weaker sort to rend, I let the wind billow me so since I know how to mend.

-February 25, 2017

Marble Divots

I miss marble divots in concrete resurrected
each Spring when crocuses peeked, teeming
beasties like Baarn kids after school
in circular standoffs with snowdrop cheeks
soon blooming red on shouting audience
though the players hushed.

The beginnings of bad deals made there
between boys and girls as always
eyeing each other, sizing up, putting down
warily guarding pockets, locked elbow little fists
curled around tigers, turtles, pandas,
to win or lose or trade, from kleintje to reus.

Season before shorts and overlopertje
when once I nearly caught Bernard
that fast little fucker slipped past
and I caught the metal fence instead.
Black eye for days then crocus colored.

Dutch weather turns quickly,
almost as fast as thirtyish
years did when I blinked
and here I’m grown, even my own
kids are not that little anymore.

-February 14, 2017