Aristotle's Kiss

 

Photo © 2024 Jennifer Wagner

There are places

my heart goes to,

cracks in the earth

softened by sunrise

or sunset.

 

Remember those pink cookies

we’d get on the way to work

to share over coffee?

 

I haven’t had one in years,

but here they are,

hanging like a sun

from a tree.

 

Perfectly round, like fruit,

to pick, to share,

to illuminate the darkness

we’ve been held in for too long.

 

Aristotle’s kiss

has been long and deep.

All that salt

needs something sweet.

 

Meet me here before

the blue-black of night,

before crow-dark feathers

creep cold across our eyelids.

 

It’s nearing sunset.

I’ve one plate,

two halves,

and

coffee’s waiting.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

Poetic Bloomings

 

Reference: “Men cannot know each other until they have eaten salt together.”  -Aristotle

 

Our Old Town

 

Our old town

lies at the bottom of a lake

like Arenal and Tronadora

in Lake Arenal.

 

New ones have sprung up

like wildflowers

around it.

 

But, they’re not the same.

 

Sure, they have

their beautiful distractions

like scenes from a movie—

 

views of snakes and jaguars

stretching themselves

near waterfalls,

 

a peacock shimmy-shaking

on the grass,

little pastel houses

clinging to cliffs.

 

But this isn’t what I want.

Never was.

Even back before we had money.

 

You know I’d live on love.

 

I’d sell it all and move

to Nicoya on the cheap

to feel that way again.

 

When I set the table for dinner,

and select a juicy tomato for the salad,

asking you what you imagine

chupacabra looks like,

I’m not just musing at random.

 

What I’m really saying is—

I’ve forgotten the mystery of you,

the wild smell of you up close,

and what it did to me.

 

I can’t even think of it now.

And so, I scuttle about

getting stuck

in the drying cement

of our resentments,

 

drowning for what

the fish only know now,

dancing around

our old town.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

Shay’s Word Garden Word List

 

NPM Day 28