‘The Moments I Catch Myself Catching You’, ‘Just Before the Boneyard’, ‘Bottled Negativity’, ‘Holding You in the Dark’ & ‘Pisces’

Edward Palmer is a Photographer, Digital Artist, and Poet living in Southeastern North Carolina. Please visit his website at https://geminiskies.com to see more of his work. Palmer enjoys fishing, creating, and spending time with his wife Kimberly, Service Dog ARROW, and pet dog Poe.

The Moments I Catch Myself Catching You

I did not watch the sandhill cranes as they came down the pavement,

long legged and lanky, their brown twin chicks in tow, but rather

I watched you, the moment your eyes held them in their passing.

Your lips, slightly parted, slipped into a smile; the same warm grin that arrives against

my own mouth with every shared kiss—lips that hold felicity and mirth the way marinas

harbor ships; gentle waves split in twain by pylons, awaiting the next caress of the green lake.

Kiss me again, my dear, for it is not the ways in which you love me that I adore, but rather

the way you love all things living. 

Your heart is not a vault in which to keep your love locked. Your heart 

is the pavement on which the cranes toe: an endless highway for all things to travel upon—a road I’ve waited a lifetime to walk.

Just Before the Boneyard

Just before the boneyard there

hangs a lantern. A miserable wrought-

iron thing, it burns white against the sun’s new skin

and hemoglobin red at noon. The flame behind

cracked-glass panes

flickers grapefruit come sunset, and fragile wispy-

blue come the hour of the witch. Some say the lantern

keeps the spirits and phantoms trapped within the tombstone

acreage—wards away the banshees and succubi—while others

say such gentle fire serves only to guide us into the

afterlife, away from earthly suffering. But I say no. No. The flame is not so kind,

for the lantern’s faint phosphorescent glow is but a mockery

of the liminal space of flesh—a perpetual glimpse of life’s

final flake bordering death: a needle’s eye of light against endless black silk.

Such spirits revere the flame as the living cherish the boneyard.

Bottled Negativity

To hold me inside is to keep the djinn

within its wax-sealed pot. For not even the winds

can blow when cinched in a bag. Such

is the frozen tomb of your gaiety.

I am the vessel that cages you, the prison of your ambition.

Break free and claim your wishes. Catch the summer winds in your sails.

Free yourself from my hold.

Holding You In The Dark

And so it was—

as the coyotes took to their yipping in the

sapphirine predawn—

that my heart awoke to your touch.

Your fingers

—such gentle wisps—

stroked against the white of your neck like snowflakes

taxing away at birch bark translucent in the night.

But cling to your throat they did not, your fingers, but instead

slipped between my own pale branches resting upon your

waxing and waning womb.

O how the years have passed since the coyotes first awakened me. Alone

and cold, their predatory howls preyed upon my solitude as if my hide were cottontail.

But youth knows not that winter is a season eternal,

and love only blossoms come the spring.

Without yet knowing you I reached for your hand all the same

and found stale canid tracks in the snow where they’d once circled my frozen heart.

Did their witching-hour yapping ever wake you as it did I, my love?

Did you also search your bed for the comfort of my phantom hands?

Did you ever find them, or did your wandering also lead you alone into the snow?

Leave your weary head in the cup of my shoulder and do not stir.

Allow me to hold you a moment more. Feel the thaw in my heart as is pumps against your skin.

Do not watch as the blackness lifts and the dogs slink once more into their dens,

for all will be light when you awake.

I know now—

as I felt your body shift close to me at the first wolfish note—

that you’ve been searching for my hands for some time now,

for you knew precisely where to find them—

around your body, holding you in the dark

Pisces

And when you feel the night pressing close, encroaching on your stillness

do not search for me in the vacant space where my body lied the night before

Find me instead woven into the silky starlight resting upon your bedroom curtain

-its sheer frailty your shield against the darkness

Find my love and all its warmth glistering within your chest as your weary, worried

breath dips and climbs like rhythmic tide.

Leave your strife to explore the tidal pools left behind

for octopi and sea stars, green algae strands and the memory of my kiss

Let it collect and hoard all the little shells and treasures it can find

Let each be a piece of me, so that you might never be alone

For we are earthly things, confined to the eddies and currents of

life’s ever-flowing stream, our bodies nothing more than trout trapped

in dark, rushing water. And though we fight the river’s strength, with all that we are,

it pulls us apart nonetheless, not knowing we are fierce swimmers

or that our love always returns us to the other, no matter the distance, no matter

the gravity; for our love, a cyan fire, purls against our scales and fins like faraway beacon

Look into the blackness, my love, and find my phosphorescent glow. Let it guide you. Let us find ourselves together anew and defy the torrent, for it is your light that tames the water around me

Let us swim together forevermore, two trout thrashing through black water, set ablaze with love’s blue fire

Devin Hartman currently resides in Michigan's Upper Peninsula with his wife and their three cats. He is a graduate of Northern Michigan University.