Sea Dreams and Time Machines

Road salt spattered on the windows,
masterpiece of winter graffiti,
cannot hide the blue outside.
Pale as robin’s egg it deepens as
it stretches to the cloud kissed
vaulted sky, dreaming in cold
benevolence on all of us,
buses and trucks, highways and signboards.

My gaze flies up the window,
soul follows, but I cannot reach
the sky outside—road salt reality
blocks my way.

My wings are bold as the sun-dark sky,
blue as the dreams of songbirds and
sea gulls, light as the crystals that
wisp overhead:

Open the window.

This is an older poem of mine, for which I love the concept, but I don’t feel like the execution is all that good.  I like some of the phrasing, but it’s an idea I think I might need to revisit now that I have some distance on it, and rewrite to get the style the way I’d like it.  I sort of love the idea of trying to work in some subtle rhythmic structure and such, because even after a lot of work, free verse still can give me the heebie jeebies, and I think a tighter structure would suit this idea and this voice better.

The Mistimed Ones

Days pass.  You drive, you work, you eat.
Days pass.  You go forward, never looking back.
Days pass.  You do not see us, but we exist.

All around you, we, the mistimed ones
Born too early or too late, living
In the wrong era, living twice.

Old souls sit in cubicles and dream
of firelight and Fae-deep hills,
write ballads on computers.

New souls, meant for future, kinder worlds
Go to Hollywood or government
And find the world too narrow still.

You do not see us standing,
watching, cloaking ourselves in modern thought.
But all cloaks slip.  We know.
Days pass.  We notice, and we laugh.

I am in love with the hush of blank pages,

The sweet siren song of white space–

Waiting for imprints of thoughts leaving traces

Like jet trails and sea glass and a laugh-wrinkled face.