I am wearing your hand prints painted on this t-shirt,
thumbs, digits in glitter the colors of Autumn,
that fall I was headed for years later,
& you moving to Houston, you never to know
that cactus rustle also in my dreams,
the spikes, the flytraps of Venus,
a flowering which baits, clamps, sucks up the juice,
cunning, that borrowing of strength, no thievery,
never a loan for what other resource to use,
what other in the end, reciprocal:
your hand dance on this shirt, the hands
your own painted, a mirroring of palms
for the gulfstream I flowed through over time,
over geography, relinquishing the teeth
I could have sunk in, but never this distance,
the lightness of it, a different dream worn:
deserts, stillness, the scope of vulva pulpits,
of interior hills, of holding, of still being held. 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.
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