February 2022
Tom Weiss
tomweiss@tds.net
Bio Note: I am a pandemically retired commercial real estate developer, surprisingly grateful for an uninvited transition to a new, purposeful focus on writing. Having once lived with reliably great love and having experienced occasional glimpses of the numinous, I’m a focused student and hopeful practitioner of love poems. My publishing history extends all the way back to December 2021.

thank you, Mary Oliver, for the shinrin yoku

I like to drink, breathe 
her body-mind,
hair, imagined sighs
when blessed
with being close  
like communion.

She reads me poems,
grills perfect pimiento
cheese sandwiches
with sides of second-
hand smoke soft-delivered 
with fish-mouthed lips.

We laugh like fools, 
prattling yoga, cats, and Andy 
as we don’t try to be good. 
No desert-walking on our knees
and hands as we listen 
to the migrant flock. 

The soft animal of our bodies 
light-lifts us on a path
through talking trees
bereft of leaves
following moon-dancers
to the boulder where we bathe.

I couldn’t bear to give it up,
this fully pregnant term
with her, even though
her life-love blazes still
for a new-dead man.
I’m grateful here.
©2022 Tom Weiss
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