poem on those rare occasions
� 2002 by john e

i could never startle you.
we are close so seldom. when we are
we float through each other and time
(people who enjoy that are rarely startled).

could i shock you
if i touch you every day?
sounds the other way around, this way too familiar,
yet sometimes chips and cracks are shocking

on old china, real furniture,
love both core and distant.
one jumps sometimes - if only from within a once-satisfied heart -
at first notice of some wear on a table, a rickety chair.

it's no longer like a slow swing
on a hammock, under a fat shady tree.
all is suspect; you wait to fall. the twine, well-used.
what would it be, if every sun brought light

to clumsy movement seen close,
silence from neither love nor acceptance,
more questions at twilight than in our distant blaze?
i adore you because i can, because you tutor me

in the ways of adoration, unknowing.
I'd like it just-so for the rest of my life:
a thought of you when the sun lightens the leaves
and the wind lifts away this staid landscape.

a certain loss brings gain,
the lines of love are smooth at a distance,
the dance genteel straight to the sack.
nothing in our twining startles us, ever.