Telling You

Some morning I will get up,
make love to the sky,
listen to the heartsongs of birds,
set out into the new day
and discover it is my last.

Will I have time enough
on that last day to tell you
all those things you want to
hear that I haven't
been able to say?

It's easy in a poem
to write love words,
poems are love songs no
matter what words they wear,
but telling you in day words,
strung together in sentences
that hang in the air,
in spoken words,
is like trying to build
pyramids out of marbles.

Love's a web of inner threads,
a weaving of memories,
sensations and dreams
into a fragile net
that takes time, that I offer
in bits and pieces,
never whole and all at once.

It's a history shared, interwoven,
one pebble upon the other,
a nightmare at a time,
a joy at a time,
it's my knowing what it means
when your left eyelid droops
or your translating
that glazed look I sometimes get.

It's the daily offerings that count,
so I probably won't tell you
in three words or less
or take love cash out of the ATM
and hand it to you in crisp new bills,
but I will sing love
in my slightly offkey voice,
while I'm doing other things and
hope that you're listening.

© Zen Oleary
October 29, 2003