Stones

Stones

It has been my experience that mystery often declares itself in the most mundane of things. For instance, stones. You bend down and pick up a stone, or walk by and kick one. Skim a flat one on the rivertop. Hike a trail, tripping on a massive rock, semi-submerged.
But never in any of those moments do you stop to consider how it is that this particular thing got to be in the shape it is in. What forces made it small, somewhat rounded and smooth. Others jagged. This one is too heavy to lift. Another is in your pocket.
Some are re-fashioned to signify lifelong commitment to another person.
Is all sand a broken-up, bigger stone? If so, there is really nothing on earth as fascinating as that.
And yet we, who strut about for seventy or so years, invent so many stories about who we are. Who we were before this. Who we will be afterwards.
Stones, the ones we treasure, pick up, skip, and kick -- smiling, if they could. 
Saying, as an old man mortars the last one into his fireplace hearth: 
If you only knew what I am.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2014 --

Taking Nicholas

Taking Nicholas

Had no idea where I was going in a wintry 1993, much less arriving.
Bit of a rise from the west, where the unknown city comes into view.
That Oldsmobile was groaning with the weight of all I needed, then.
Pushing through, an intrepid whitewater rafter seeking new rapids.
The biggest place I would ever live in twinkled, sparkled -- beckoned.

Little did I know that every sidewalk crack was waiting for my shoe.
Canal trails, wondering when the prairie boy would get on the scene.
My new hometown. Four gargoyles on that Center Tower winked:
This, friend, is England without the bad teeth that goes along with it.
And miracle of it all -- I landed a penthouse suite within sight of them.

Two decades on I have no regrets. Sometimes the past needs to fade.
You can never know what will be until you get in the Cutlass and drive.
Every time I come home nowadays, I hit the signal on a certain exit --
Take that one turn, named for a saint shoving things down a chimney.
And realize anew that where I live is the best gift I've ever been given. 

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2014 --

The Day I Realized She Was Not For Me

The Day I Realized She Was Not For Me

Four hours in an amusement park naturally lends itself
to a certain level of exhaustion.  -------------------- So
we spent our recuperative moments at an oyster bar.
The food I hate most, after olives, slidng into my gullet.
Then I broached the subject:
Asked her if she liked the works of Ian McEwan.
She said he was good as Gandalf, in Lord of the Rings.
But she does know her perfumes. Offset the oyster stench.

I then mentioned The Chronicles of Narnia.
Is C.S. Lewis too theologically-biased in his fiction?
She told me she preferred his Alice in Wonderland.
And then asked me what he had written most recently.
[It was at this moment that my goal changed to finding out
what the hell perfume she wore, so I could buy two jars
and spray it all over a certain homely girl I'd seen recently,
bent intently over Dostoevsky at the local library…]

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2014 --

The Raised Voice

The Raised Voice

As long as all the rancour is directed elsewhere
I find myself encouraging it. Kill the common enemy.
Over tea you will steam it out, and I can not agree more.
On a rampage, the nostrils-flared beauty is all over you.
The only disagreement is about specific punishment.
You tend to favour hanging -- and I call for beheading.

Tonight though, I am a sudden advocate of clemency.
Benefit of the doubt. Pardon of the accused, even.
Those beloved eyes that have narrowed so often
upon the disembowelling of anyone offending one of us
are focused for the first time on me, and my raised voice.
I stare at your cup. The shock is lightning. Forgive me.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2014 --

Re-painting It

Re-painting It

Getting that loan in the first place. Our first big trial.
Then again, trust us to drive straight to Shylock & Sons!
Remember spending the first portion on vintage claret?
If three angels had descended that evening, both of us
would have told them to go -- heal someone of cancer.

Building a new world can definitely become this local.
It was a fixer-upper, and I let you choose a future color.
Unloading the van, the only thing wider than your smile
was my eyes. What the hell? Do we live in Bermuda?
Pastels are in, you said. I promptly prepared the rollers.

Twenty years on, the best of my life is in the past tense.
The very thing we once mocked angels with, took you.
And I notice how right you were, the way the far ocean
meets the lilacs. Our paradise in the middle of it all.
An afternoon in the hardware store, wet-eyed, asking

What do you, what do you have, in more of a lavender?

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2014 --