Poems: Stephen Mead

                                                                   Spring Trees

 

begin in fog, a gray softest

where smallest flowers start, bead by bead...

I can taste their gems of viridescence

& then the white pearls unfurling

a shell song between limbs.

 

Black does not fracture the space

but blends with what sun touches -

gentleness now, its vivid issue

through erasures of rain drops.

 

At this moment I am on the phone

forty blocks, fourteen minutes & four continents

away on the pages of intimacy cabling my voice

past the picture of you heard in every sigh

as you speak, & these trees, in abundance,

entirely seize my vision.

 

So, love, spirit to spirit, our senses collide.

 

                                                                  Amaryllis

 

 Amaryllis -

Say it - the hum of incantation,

the swell hymn of petals unfurling

laps of scents, tongues,

texture-smooth moving over taste

buds to the territory of pores,

of visions opening for the months

of touches, the moments of mouths...

 

There entire lifetimes are encapsulated,

a coronation on green stalks,

the soft blades assuming light at the tips,

& more hip to living than your or than me,

except when we pause, make a bed of song

in these bulbs growing their godhead infinitely.

 

 

                                                                         Once, was

 

Wind-----

easy dreaming back to that blackness

I was the light of in motion, those waves,

these rain drops, my gusts just breaths

for moments more breezy

when moments happened to stretch,

wrench, except sighs, wise

in their innocence, returned on blossoms,

surfaces, skin, with my every crest

there, there & everywhere,

a message blessing, a blessing sent.

 

                                                               

                                                                  Find You an Older Man

 

of youth, eternally wise,

of musical bookishness,

of serious play,

of arms,

Venice entirely,

of a body,

gondola-shaped,

& a soul

of mariner-salt.

 

Maybe he's your own age or younger.

Maybe his soul is only a cove

you need to make up.

Maybe the same goes for him

in regards to you,

but let's not start with maybes;

let's start with the heart

who will hold you for yourself.

 

                                                                        Sheets

                                                                                              

We play in peek-a-boo swirls

fresh from the laundry line,

the wind, our canvas, & I

in my Mary Pickford pigtails

& you, swashbuckling Douglas

Fairbanks of the highest seas

bed-stretching before our

Do-si-do flap to flap,

next promenade back,

corners meeting pleats

our hands smooth

& soothe tight

for a nickel's bounce

as we dive in afterwards

like fountain wishes

with shore-leave passion

of laughing heels & kicking legs.

Bio: Having worked a variety health care and Civil Service jobs to pay the bills, Stephen Mead, now retired, always managed to squeeze out time for writing poetry/essays and creating art. Occasionally he even got paid for this work. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, an online site depicting artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall.