Taking Chances

I dip my toe in to test you...
I make creases upon your surface,
Not to age you quickly,
But rather to touch you before it's too late,
Before the sun and moon platoon
And the tides come to drive me away.

I erect a sand castle on your bank,
A maquette of our future home,
Won't you lap its edges,
Gently molding its pillars to the soil?
It'll have bowers for you to retreat to
If I'm ever too suffocating;
But know all I've ever wanted was to hold you
In a place we can call our own.

You're visual ecstasy—
The paradigm of natural beauty,
Muse of Homer,
Domicile of Neptune,
And of labyrinthine reefs
And mythical creatures,
Sunken treasures—
Too decorated to have me as an ornament...

But still I dip in my toe to test you,
And having seen the ripples,
I can say I touched you
Before it was too late...
That I took a chance with a monolith
Before the sun and moon platooned,
And the tides came to drive me away.


—Kevin Waring

Into the Wilderness

The path you’ve chosen is challenging—
It is of the lesser traversed:
The trees that abound are imposing,
And something in its shadows always seems to lurk,
Although they provide a nice canopy
For when ominous clouds are wont to burst,
Reassurance offers greater security
When things go from bad to worse.

And when that happens,
When you feel you can no longer endure,
Illuminate the sky with the brightest, red flare—
I will hear your cri de coeur.


You love hot tea,
Hopefully you’ve got some in your thermos,
For when cold ensnares your tiny body,
You’ll need something warm to hold to you close;
Let it spur your insides,
Singeing, even, your underclothes,
Until you’re a human bolide,
Leaving ablaze trails in your afterglow.

And when woods are alit
By a barreling mystique,
I’ll know you’ve opened the soffit
Beneath where your bones creak.

Because beneath that luminous exterior
Lay a spirit that looms larger than those trees,
And a heart ten times warmer than any estival breeze;
You embody the fervor of a raging river,
Churning as it thrusts unto where it empties...
And like the body... to which it delivers,
Your potential, too, has limitless boundaries.


—Kevin Waring