Concerning going away...

"I don't know why I ever went away" you sighed. Naked in our bed, far away eyes on the ceiling, your arm crooked and the back of your hand pressed to your forehead.

We had just made love - or were about to - and I was absorbed in the slow explorations of your body. Your voice drifted over us, a whisper that felt like it was meant more for yourself than for me. Thinking that it may have been an escaped thought, one not meant to have left your own musings, I did not respond.  I let it wash over us, drift away and vanish like vapour. 

The moment, like so many others between us, was perfect. Cocooned in a slow quiet and safe place, bare to each other but unafraid. I held onto this moment, willing it to last, letting my fingers run circles and patters across your soft skin.  I wanted to let sink into you all that I was feeling, pouring all of me out through the tips of my fingers and the fleshy palm of my hand, as if by osmosis the truth of my heart could be known to you.

I do not know why you go away - I cannot properly respond to you in any other manner but it the way in which I am in this moment. I know that you are here now, but you will go away again at some time - and then return bewildered at the time lost. 

I will stay as steady as I am able and wait for your return. These moments are worth waiting for you.

The Man in the Station

What shape your eyes?

To The Lady on the Train,

When next I see you, what shape your eyes? What colour will they hold?


I have seen your eyes in many shapes and hues, from bright shining half moons to oval soft coloured pools. I have seen the dark fire and flash of anger and the playful light of joy. I have seen the rise of eyebrows in the midst of discussions and the crinkle at the corners during laughter.


In your eyes I have seen you so close to me and in an instant I have watched you travel miles and years away. In your eyes I have seen you disappear from me completely and I have seen you open up and bare all to me. In your eyes I have seen heart wrenching sorrow and I have seen wondrous joy – and I have seen the two come together in the same instant.


From the narrow squint to the far-away drift, I have held you and watched you and tried to know you. In your eyes I have seen what you most wanted to hide and I have seen what you most needed to be seen. In your eyes I have seen the beckoning of a kiss, the need for distance, and the desire to be understood.


In all the shapes and colours of your eyes, I have fallen. 
In all the shapes and colours of your eyes, I am lost and I am found.


The Man in the Station

In your palm...

Angel,

You possess a beauty that turns my heart to brittle crystal. I feel that it would shatter to a million splinters but for being filled by love. Just as you do not know your own beauty, you are unaware that I have placed my heart into the palm of your hand.

Just me

Evening...

Angel,

The sun is starting to go down in the east. The sky, still blue but the light is pink and the shadows long. It is cooling but dead calm and quiet. The whole of this bay is a sheet of glass. It looks more like a lake than the Atlantic ocean. It feels as though one could paddle a canoe safely over the curve of the earth and arrive unharmed in Ireland - or Scotland, or France. 

From here it is difficult to imagine the hardships that the first settlers of this beautiful and wild land must have endured. This place has a beauty that holds ones imagination and captures ones heart. Our ancestors have at different times made their way to these shores. Families making their way in this new land - raising children - and their children - and their children - down through the generations. Families growing and settling and setting out to find new places to settle. 

It is impossible to imagine all of the paths that might have been taken and not taken that would allow for us to find each other. Our families, once settled here and then scattered to settle further west. We are not from this place, but we both have family here and feel a draw to it. 

One day we will discover this land for ourselves, traveling its hills and valleys, standing on its shores of cliffs and beaches. We will discover the wild and the tame of the place and know why it holds a person once they have been here.

One day we will come.

Just me

Morning...

Angel,

The morning has come, gliding silent like a canoe on a glass still lake. Fog has settled thick and where the night was black, the day is grey and close. One cannot feel the sun nor even tell with any true certainty where it hangs in the sky. We are hushed under a grey silk blanket. the clock chimes the passage of time faster than our reality. We are slow to move, outside no one stirs, there is no bird song. The few birds in flight seem to be nervous and in a hurry to be somewhere else.

I will amble down the road toward the beach, the shape of a man, hooded against the damp chill of the early morning.  Even the sound of my footsteps is muted and swallowed up by the closeness of the morning. Once on the beach, the sandals come off so that I can feel the cool wet sand.

You are 2000 kilometers away and yet you have been with me here the whole time. The morning hangs melancholy around my neck like a sorrow as I walk the length of the beach. To hold your hand as we walked through the thick fog would change its complexion and entirely. 

These rolling magical mists would be instantly transformed from something that has stolen the world from us to something that shelters us from the world for a little while. We would walk hand in hand leaving playful parallel footprints in the sand except where we have stopped to face each other to steal a private kiss. The cool damp would disappear in the warmth of your palm in mine. 

In this grey envelope, we are alone in the world for a moment - sand, sea, and us. We would know the weight and expanse of the ocean at our feet though all we can see is one unbroken water-sky with no horizon. The shore we stand on stretches for an eternity and follows its own unbroken distance. We would stand on this shore together, close, fingers entwined, the water lapping at our feet. We would stand tall knowing that this world belongs to us. 

Here, and the feel of your cheek next to mine and the scent of you mingled with the salt air... Here and you...

Just me

Beach walk

Early morning, a lonely beach, and the fog has rolled in. The bay is calm, small waves lapping at the shore in rhythmic whispers. From this patch of sand, I can see no horizon. The sea and sky are one grey distance, the only line between where I am and an empty universe is the shore immediately in front of me. If I dipped my toes in the water, I could swim up to the sky, the beach behind me to be swallowed up by the mist. I could walk to the water, push out, turning to float on my back – let myself drift to lands and worlds yet unimagined - leaving nothing but footprints in wet sand.


I continue walking along the beach, leaving a crooked line of footprints. When I reach the end of the beach, I will turn and follow my steps back like a trail of breadcrumbs. I marvel at my own inability to walk in a strait line. I will climb the rocks and dunes from the beach back up to the road, rising like a dark grey apparition. Unfolded out of the sea and mists to land firmly back on solid ground.

The way you sleep...

The way you sleep in our bed is the way mist rises from the lake.

Brief and still – a magical and mystical apparition – a pale beautiful ghost.

Curls splayed on the pillow – a wild stillness and your soft scent rising. Tangled hair disappears into the pillow, your face silhouetted, a cameo that would dash great ships on even greater rugged rocks, if commanded. The corner of your eye holds my gaze to travel the distance of your cheek then along your chin and around your cheek to the sacred place below your ear. Below the soft skin, the rhythmic pulse of your blood setting the beat and tempo of my own heart

Your hand, a white lily on tea coloured sheets, caressing the back of lover or smoothing your skirt on your thighs. Your delicate fingers with opal coloured nails do not move. I am drawn to your hand now, because your hands are always moving. But here in your sleep, they are motionless – in fact, but for your breathing you are so very peacefully still...

Your sharp shoulders, white, strong, freckled with constellations are turned toward the mattress. Your strong straight back disappears beneath the quilt. The rolling hills of the quilt hint of your body and there is enough knowledge in my hands to know your landscape. Watching you sleep now, I know the lines and shapes and feel of you. I can follow the taper of your waist and the flare of your hips. I know the shape and texture of your round bottom and the feel of your thighs. I know the taste of the back of your knee and the feel of my lips pressed to your toes.

I cannot help but want to freeze this moment. I want to suspend it like hanging a Christmas ornament from a tree. Perfect, enclosed, beautiful in it's fragility – a place where my eye can wander to hold this moment. I want to find you here every time wake up. I want your heart to be anchored to this place, a bay sheltered from any storm.

Knowing that this moment cannot last for as long as it deserves to, knowing that the press of time and obligations will soon stir the calm surface of this sleeping still lake, and knowing that I am undeniably drawn to you... I place my hand over yours – sinew, bone, muscle, and flesh – and a wonder, held in my own hand. I place my lips to your temple, breath you in for a soft moment – and here I could stay an eternity... The mist rises from the stillness and is evaporated away by the sun... and you stir.

The way you sleep in our bed is the way mist rises from the lake...

Toward the end of August...

To The Lady on the Train,

The slide to mid August has brought noticably shorter days and suddenly cooler nights. Although this city is beseiged by construction at every corner, the level of traffic seems suddenly less frenzied. Perhaps less humidity and cooler temperatures have relaxed us a little - we no longer are irritated under a cruely oppressive sky.

I will drive you home - pushing our way slowly through the city and then opening up when we hit the highway. We will talk and I will hold your hand or rest it on your knee. We will be comfortable and easy with each other. But I will also hold in my thoughts and not say the words that I wish that I could say.

We will be away from each other for a while... and all I want is for you to come with me... I want to tell you how much I will miss you - but I can't.

I think that you know it though. I think that you can feel it.

The Man in the Station

After the dance..

Angel,

The party is over - the music has stopped playing and the lights have come on. We are pressed into service to help tidy the hall up a little.. I am tipsy and though initially I do not feel like it - because I want the night to continue - we have made the helping out fun.

We did not dance. We did not kiss. We did not touch. But I did watch you.. I looked at you and your beauty absolutely filled me.. I watched another couple wed and wanted that to be us. I watched you dance with others and wished that it could be me that you held on to as we turned slowly.

At the end of this night, all I wanted was to take you back to my room... I wanted to lay you down and kiss you long and slow... I wanted to explore - to wrap you up and to be wrapped up...

I wanted to fall asleep beside you with you in my arms and to wake up beside you. I wanted it enough that I could feel it.

I ached wanting you.

I ache wanting you still.

Just me.

Union Station...

To The Lady on the Train,

If you spend any amount of time in Union station, you learn that the building has its own life. The people move in flows and waves with a rhythm and pulse dictated by this great beast... It is like being caught in the belly of a whale, the arched ceiling both amplifying echoed sound and muffling it..  The rumble and clang of unseen trains as they pull into and out of the station - anticipated and fearful.. They sound like creaking bones and you almost expect the whole place to slowly roll over..

You are never physically alone in Union Station, nor are you present with the crowd. We are all simply caught up like so many krill. It is ironic how one can find solitude among the waves of people moving through this station - but it is why I come here...

This station anchors the city - it is the push-pin that holds Toronto in its place against Lake Ontario. Commuters from bedroom communities and travellers off to farther destinations ebb and flow thorough here. I am comforted by the rhythms of traffic and noise and the breath of the place. She isn't young any more and she has changed over the years... but the bones of her are still strong and grand..

In a quieter corner, a slow observer amid the throb, waiting... The Man in the Station.

Lost..

To The Lady on the Train,

There is a man here in the station and he looks like he has just lost his best friend.

I told him to make sure that the Lady on the Train knows that he will alwasy be waiting in the station for her.

The Man in the Station

Here...

To The Lady on the Train,

I don't know where you are...

I know that you have much on your mind and that there is much to take up your time and energy. I know that these things create a distance greater than any stretch of highway or flight of stairs that might be between us. I know that the distance it takes to push a send button on a text is far greater than the twitch of a thumb. Maybe you need this distance, and I can understand and respect it - I don't even need you to respond to this message. I want you to know where I am though. Whenever you want or need, for whatever you want or need - I am here - and will remain here.

Always...

The Man in the Station

A Landscape..

Angel,

There is landscape of continents, countries and territories - ever changing, wild and tame, dangerous and safe, known and unknowable...

I have travelled the flat plains of your stomach and crossed the freckled fields of your shoulders and back...

I have been lost in the wild tubmling curls of your hair, finally emerging by the  jewelled lobe of an ear...

I have roamed the rolling hills of your buttocks and traversed the valley between the twin peaks of your breasts..

I have drowned in the depths of your eyes, wandering and in wonder - never wanting to leave...

I have swum through the waves of your toes and scaled ankles and knees...

I have traced the lines and patterns across your skin - following time-forgotten migrations...

I have bowed to press my forehead to your lower back as a devotee at an altar...

I have gathered in a universe when I scooped my arm around your waist to pull you close - an infinity contained in the rise and fall of your breath and in the rhythm of your heart...

There is a landscape - known, forgotten, rediscovered, charted and uncharted - and forever, a changing mystery...

There is you.

Just me.