The waves speak of the ocean’s mystery You play flute beneath the ceiling of stars So close to Heaven on the lifeguard’s chair When I with my soft voice sing harmony I gather shells and stones with pretty scars And you touch nothing else but my long hair. Even now I hold dear this memory Of holding hands and climbing the sand bar The thermos of hot Ovaltine we share Your love for Vivaldi and Debussy. Perhaps one day you will read this memoir I hoped to find you but did not kn

Her beauty must be managed with a glove For beauty is a thing she’s guilty of Blooming without a mirror in her hand Something the rose can never understand Whose beauty shares a garden with the thorn For truly its purity will be torn Since it is prone to the ethereal As she is prone to the ephemeral.

Impatient to be twelve at eleven The dawn of puberty still unbroken That maiden morning of adolescence Marking the passage of all innocence With flowers pressed inside a diary The pages turned to repeatedly A name penciled, a crayon valentine The word “forever” with an underline A cut-out heart, the pictures jotted on Before when someone realized she was gone When she was tricked into a stranger’s car Terrified when it sped upon the tar And stopped abruptly in the wilderness

At dawn I think about a cup of tea Like others I am alert to the sound Of traffic, and if I open my eyes And if I join the living finally If conscious of the potential around I might look for a good reason to rise But I will struggle with this probably Reluctantly my feet will find the ground And find the kitchen when the kettle cries.