It was pure poetry
when you were
a lone traveler
in your canoe and
suddenly the sky
darkened by a flock
of migrating birds.
All you could hear was
the flapping of their wings
and their wild calls.
For a brief time there was
no time.
You put your hands around
your shoulders and looked
the other way where
a lone bird was flying
in the opposite direction
determined, noble and
uncertain.
You saw the bird among
the crowd of many.
“That was my unwritten poem”,
you said.
“Where everything is
so urgent to survive,
I go where the unknown may
or may not welcome me.
I go embracing pain
to be embraced by
beauty”.
pain
My Spring
Yes, there is someplace
a deep place,
a lonely place.
Unreachable, unexplainable,
and mysterious in me that
longs for you.
When the air feels still
and a cool soothing breeze
suddenly brushes my face,
I know, in my heart, that
you are aware of this longing.
The Dogwood has bloomed
outside my window
and my feet long to feel
the fresh lively earth.
It is in the shower of
pink, yellow, and white blossoms
that I imagine you.
You twirling and smiling as
if there has never been
any pain. no,
only rapture, only love.
Hydeh Aubon (3/29/07)
Red Scarf
Your face halfway hidden
in the red scarf that she
knitted for you long ago
when you wouldn’t turn
your face from the ocean and look
at her.
I remember that day when
she was sitting on a wooden chair,
the room smelled of tarragon and firewood
and you stood with your back to her
staring at the ink blue ocean.
Her hands knitted steadily and
you never knew the pain she endured
with the hands that disobeyed with
pain. And you never knew
that each time she stared at your dark
sad curls, she knitted her stifled
poems into a red scarf that
you wear now to hide your beautiful face.
And she remembers all this with
a faded smile while she knows
the ocean could still be inky blue
and your scarf must still be poetically red.