Sonnettics

Your tight, thin lips are drawn to kiss remorse,
regret, remiss should I neglect to draw
my eyes, attentive to your grip, of course
you only glance, one chance to see.  I saw
the years of sighs and days of driving home
alone.  So young, so old, so caught between
the lust that makes you stay, that makes you roam
to places where you pray to be unseen.
But 95 is long; July is hot.
I passed you north of Richmond, past the end
of everything expected, which you got:
a stranger’s passing glance, mistaken friend.
The rain is quickly coating both our roads
and miles ahead a thundercloud explodes.

. . . becomes the softest sediment below
the coldest lake of tears as pure as ice
when sanity has nowhere left to go
and drowning is the ultimate device
of metaphoric words which wait, and wait
in solitude of grubby notebook sheets,
the stillness of a rescuer too late:
emotionless, unfathomed, more complete.
She holds my hand as if it were divine
and strokes the skin above my solemn wrist
to signify her yet unuttered “mine”
as I succumb with just the slightest twist,
as rings of water ripple through the scene
while neither lover knows what loving means.