Deux Estrangers Familiers – a poem that fell out upon awakening

Poetry for me is not something that I can force.  It rushes out, tethered by a phrase or imagery in the moment and must be grasped and quickly captured before its elusiveness causes a slip through the fingers.

 

Natural Heart – taken with my Nikon D100 this morning

 

Deux Estrangers Familiers

 

I want to redolently float through your inner landscape,

Collecting an emotional bouquet of your feelings

Lazily, slowly, and with appreciation of the varying scent of each of them

 

Who are you?  I do not know.  But you know me.

 

Silently I have come to you, tip-toeing into your thoughts,

You have awakened with the sound of my voice inside of your head

And the depth of my laughter is resonant within you

 

And I, I have awakened with your impression upon me

Like a set of sheet wrinkles softly pressed upon my sleeping brain

Slowly fading away as wakefulness tumbles into my consciousness

 

Who are you? I do not know. But you are familiar.

 

Your touch has lingered in the bead of sweat that traveled

From my neck down past my collarbone

And nestled softly between my breasts on a hot summer day

 

My hands have touched the back of your hands lightly, tracing your fingers

Leaving a vestigial recognition of my fingertips

Upon your skin that calls out for me at odd times.

 

Two familiar strangers – deux estrangers familiers

Will we recognize each other when we are face-to-face

Or will we continue to pass by unseen, unknown – still unfamiliar after all?

 

~SE