STEPHEN MEAD

Daylight

The life of windows, the world turning
its green pages, pages turning, the world...

From the back of your motorcycle, no helmet,
singing, mooing at cows, thinking your engine
would drown out my bad voice amid allergy country,
the sky doming over, a V of geese suddenly panning
to where we sat sheet-wrapped on the porch,
lazy togas off classical shoulders
warm from afternoon love 
& all of this just a movie—modern, note
the motorcycle; ageless, note the landscape—
& I want to believe such daylight combs the rooms
time is forgetting now.

Swimming

This is another way:
files, the names half familiar
memories or dreams, somebody's anyway.

Anyway I flip through, find the slot, index charts,
do a mail route marathon, time running on.
Time, running on time, neither a borrower
or lender be owned—no—owned by
the moments, go in, out, through
immersion, the intensity of tenderness,
our bread & wine shenanigans needed between
treading, knead us like waves:
fingers trace a chin, lips just above
the current but knowing where below goes.

Go.
Where?
Below?

You said, this river, kiss
the fingers nicked & cut by files, the flipping,
the names, dreams, memories, somebody's,
somebody's...

In, you said, in this river: jump, jump
knowing because you have been swimming there
same as anyone from the catalogue sea.