A Place

To The Lady on the Train,

The place was untamed and overgrown. 

Neglected, a broken patch of land. 

But I felled the trees and cleared the land. 

I moved the boulders with my back and sheer will. 

I leveled the ground with the pacings of a madman. 

I split open the canopy with my bare hands to open up the sky. 

I poured sweat and blood into the soil until it finally yielded.

I drove pilings into the earth for a foundation upon which to build what I could. 

The timbers milled by me, the joists hung and hammered into place by me and the frame of this place set by me. 

The door hangs open and crooked and the roof leaks but here I will stay for I have built it myself for myself. 

I will gather the light that shines from your eyes to make the windows. 

I will gather words that fall from your mouth to chink the gaps and patch the roof. 

And the wind will no longer blow through. 

From The Man in the Station

In a place not far from here...

To The Lady on the Train,

I saw a woman on the TTC this morning that in some ways reminded me of you - this happens quite a bit, actually. It sent my mind to wandering and remembering and thinking about things that were and things that might have been. 

Even now a slender woman with brown hair, brown eyes, and freckles can get onto a streetcar, and in the middle of a crowded trolley I can be transported to somewhere that I cannot fully describe. 

I know that there is a time and a place that is very real because I have visited it many many times. But it is almost as if it's another dimension that knocks up against this reality and I can only get glimpses of it.

And in this place I know the scent of you and the feel of your skin beneath my palm. In this place I can trace your lines and draw new patterns from your freckles. I can follow the arch and curve of your spine and hear the sigh of your breath on clean sheets. In this place I know your eyes and your smile and feel of your hair on my cheek.

In this place I can feel the shifting of weight and turning and the duality of strained tension and of surrender. I know that this place and this time are real and the echos of it resonate somewhere deep inside of me like the ringing of a deep low bell.

Even now, the hum of you lies just beyond what I can fully perceive. But when I listen for it, I always find you in this place.

The Man in the Station.

Beauty - always

To The Lady on the Train,

Your beauty is a lighthouse that shines across the miles. The circle of your gaze a beacon.
Your smile is a door opening to home.
Your eyes are the edge of the known world.
To fall in is to find a shifting landscape of wonders.

The Man in the Station