We cannot rush winter

notes from inside the sound

/ field notes /

There is a voice within each of us which deceives in its quiet, though never neglects. Never does it turn itself away from our tenderest needs. It aches for us; calls to us. Not knowing what it is to reject, it cannot understand why we do not come to it. Why we are too proud to crawl to it in times of confusion, restlessness. I am making small, repeated, and repeatable, efforts to stay with it, to more devoutly press my body up against its sound. Knowing nothing of loneliness, nothing of fear, the voice beats softly like an infinite heart.

.

I had been too far away from myself, and too up-close, to crawl under my skin. There is a sweet spot between distraction and obsession, a place where intensity does not interrupt but rather lubricates flow. I seek it with great seriousness and without restriction. I find it meeting God during multiple orgasms, faceless, ecstatic, naked and wet. My body still aches long after, and the ache is a hymn, sweet pulsing. Wordless poetics.

.

Comparison. Jealousy. Envy. I become not too small in these traps, but too cowardly. A far greater offence.

.

Most days, I don’t worry about much of anything the way I used to when I was drinking. For all the ways I thought drinking would make things easier it made everything exponentially harder because of the way it plastered itself to me as dead weight, a massive drag on the soul, a crushing burden on the body and psyche. The most beautiful thing I ever did for my erotic life was quit drinking. Now, finally, every sensation is mine. Every touch, every desire. The insane freedom makes me laugh out loud at inopportune times. At lunch with a friend as we order salads. Alone in the kitchen at quarter to five in the morning, sipping my coffee and watching the dark.

.

I’ve written a few lines of poetry, nothing of note, nothing worth much. But I continue to throw little logs on the slow burning fire of language. We cannot rush winter; we have to keep warm.

.

There is no wind, no scent to the stiff air as I walk the parking lot. Small pine trees adorned with red velvet ribbon are clumped together on the pine-needled pavement at the entrance to the supermarket. At checkout, the elderly cashier who wears a brace on both wrists, rings my groceries: sweet potatoes, brown sugar, mini marshmallows, butter, tonic, lime. Smiling more with her eyes than her face, she wishes me a Happy Thanksgiving. Tells me her husband died years ago. Tells me: Enjoy your family, that’s the most important thing.

.

Late afternoon. The neighborhood kids are chasing each other across the lawns out front in knit hats and gloves. Alone on my back patio, our string of party lights flicks on as I light my cigarette. The air is charcoal navy blue. The cold in the sky smells like snow, the kind your bones remember. Your first time. Before you had words.

.

This is the voice. The wide open mouth of the sound.

This is the heart of everything, beating.

.

Enjoy my erotic poetry at my additional Substack site: Poetica. Written and intended for a mature audience.

Photo by Hoang Uyen on Unsplash