We're All Mad Here

I knew she was there
But it took a moment and a small commitment
To puzzle it out.
She was at the human end of a leash
Stealthy, mostly not by choice.
The fluffy creature on the dog end of the lead
Her ambassador.
Her validation.

The moment reminded me of the joke leashes
I once saw sold and paraded about at Disney.
A stiff leash held by the vacationer
Walking an invisible dog.
Here the dog was walking the invisible woman.

She first appeared to me as a disembodied smile.
Alice’s Cheshire cat.
The rest of her materialized shortly
And so we had a moment,
Real as real gets,
Of acknowledgement,
One phantom to the next.

-PS

“Goes to show you can’t judge a fish by the hook in its mouth.”

-Lewis Carroll

Hold Love Dear

Hold Love Dear


A scene from the best movie ever made flickers
Lit with a foggy lamp
Or maybe it's the last page of a book
You put down
Drifted off
Dreamed on,
The page before things became…
Complicated.

How can you hold joy?
-Not to contain it-
What vessel would suffice?
No, no
But there are such moments
Rare as sand
And so also hard to hold
That we know:

That flying embrace
A leap of innocent faith
Blind and boisterous
Super heroes in footsie flannel pajamas
Maybe 4, maybe 5
The birthdays race by
Is that a new tooth I see?

But if such a moment could be captured
Wouldn’t we hold it dear
The ultimate cuddle
Cork it tight
And place it on the highest alter
And revisit it time and again
Just to check
Just to recharge
Just to feel the glow,
Circling back to hold love dear?


-P. Sanderson