snow...

you think me
open.

that i tell the world
all there is.

that every thing experienced
becomes
some form of
public
domain

... but i...

i am like this
snow

sharing being
the act of
evaporation
of whats already been
let go

and your lives
are just backdrops to mine
just as mine
is to yours

and the sacred
the few
...
there are so many
stories
i'll never tell
at best
at times
alluding
showing a drop
from the ocean
beneath
that most think rain...
but only if you were there
swimming beside
would you even know
the salt
of which i flavor
these pages with...

my life
it is like
tonight's short lived snow
collecting
being swept away
and melting

but my heart
it is like these streets
solid
open
well lined
spaces
which
absorb
the things
that flutter down from
the skies...

and
i go back now to the first days of
december
back again to the alps
and again to the fortresses of europe
and sit down on the wall perched above vilnius
meandering through forest paths
and still throwing chips to gulls off the isle of mull

and these things
like this snow
i show
to the world
but
all
other things
like all the sentences i never write
but sleep and wake to

those are mine.

thats why youll never hear me speak of those donkeys
or those nights in the cellar
or where the time capsule is stashed...

all things i hold dear
they are
like these stones on my shelf
more solid than snow
to others just stones
to me
they are streets
bars
friends
different days in the 20s
an engraved fish
and old dm's from covent g.

you think me open
saying all that i contain
never knowing
how little ive ever spoken

you think me a blizzard
not an inlet running under your feet
out into expanses so great...

you forget
that just as you do not think of me
each and every moment
i think of you in the same way.

our stories are like this snow
the things i speak aloud
already gone

i can count on one hand
the actual only
full oceans ive ever shown...

you see...
like this snow
that fell and is now
going to some other place...

i really am
no different
than
you...

so much of life
just
melts
on the
tips of
our tongues.


kim thompson. tues. 31 jan 2012 19.39 seoul. s. korea.