Love is Smooth and Waxy
Love is smooth and waxy, like the acorn
I found in a greenway by the Sacramento River.
We’d parked our car to take a break, were slowly
walking, passed teenagers murmuring in the tree shadows.
Playing hooky? One couple making out.
They didn’t look in our direction. No one accosted us,
no one asked how we’ve lasted together for so long…
two older people traveling miles through
music and silences and losses of tire pressure.
I guess we were invisible to those kids,
as the acorn was, hidden in my fist,
warm, like a candle;
heavy, like a gold nugget;
long, like the roads we’d driven on
through plains in the middle states;
and aerodynamic, like machine gun bullets…
not like the acorns where we’d come from.
I wish I’d saved it for my collection of rarities.
Since we left that place,
it’s been on my mind...
a flame from the forest.
Joel Moskowitz, an artist and retired picture framer in Massachusetts, is writing a book of poems about moving into a new house at the edge of a forest. His poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Ibbetson Street Press, J Journal, Midstream, Naugatuck River Review, The Healing Muse, MuddyRiverPoetryReview.com, BostonPoetryMagazine.com, Amethyst Review, and Soul-Lit.
Amethyst Review 