"in time together" by Barbaranne Branca

in time together

By Barbaranne Branca

I.

come

sit by the bay window

set the paring knife down

next to the apples

cover the mending basket

the rising dough

leave this work for now

the plush Chesterfield chair

awaits you

each leather button an embrace of relief

let the bone weariness settle

as you lower yourself

to the soft sigh

of leather polished gleaming molasses

lean back

slip off your shoes 

nestle your feet into the carpet

allow the tiredness to seep out

we sit

savoring the glow of gold-tinged clouds and flamingo pink horizon

the sun melts down under the edge of the earth

as the weight of the day slides away

II.

dusk light 

falling through the windowpanes

creates ever lengthening shadows

of

slightly misshapen rectangles

spreading along the carpet

evening light moves slowly towards your chair

softly draping over your shoulders

until you are surrounded 

a soft mantle of luminosity

we sit 

drawn to moonlight

as butterflies need sun 

they flutter by

and we 

we are as immovable as mountains

invisible as yesterday’s sighs

weightless as light

becoming light

silence settles

dewdrops of time glistening

we come into stillness

III.

perhaps you close your eyes

as you sit

though we are side by side

I wonder

what are you seeing

what you feel in your body

and your thoughts

what are your thoughts

all this I cannot see

I can only invite

with questions about awareness

of this moment

wanting to perceive your within-self

on the same journey

breathing together

separately

IV.  

I have no memory of

when our Milky Way and Gaia-Enceladus collided

yet

as we gaze  

the pull of that celestial spinning spiral 

reaches us through the window

eyes closed

we are drawn to

the call of constellations

wending their way across the dome sky

each with a guiding message

sometimes we hear

sometimes not

V.

at times I am the dome sky

robin’s egg blue and pearl

vast 

spacious

all clouds 

all thoughts 

all stories

float across me and disappear

none can affect the dome sky

eternal and unchanging

at times I remember I am

what do I know about stars

or photosynthesis

the plant on the kitchen sill

arches towards sunlight

and sends vines towards me

as I wash dishes

I remember the tips of my fingers

when I first touched my newborn son

with that love 

I sooth the vine

placing it gently on the sill

what do I know about the body’s passage

from squalling at birth

to the last sigh

be it fetid or sweet 

I can only offer to be with you

VI.

when we raced each other across the meadow

did we realize

we are circumnavigating Stonehenge

did we perceive

the power of the circle radiating from

those looming petrous monoliths

could we sense the ley lines

pressing our ears against 

first one then another then another stone

the lintels and posts reveal nothing about astronomical alignment to us

we cannot connect to the pulsing

it is what we seek

desperate

should we focus on the large sarsen pillars 

or the smaller bluestones

the ones which originated miles away at Preseli Hills

to find the solstice and equinox points

how do we find what seems to be lost

when we are lost

VII.

we walked the woods behind the house

striding over common mushrooms 

that photographers have revealed are eerie worlds of color and undulations

mushrooms pushing through moist earth

a woodpecker churrs

how little we see

we strode over 4.5 billion years 

buried beneath us

Triassic era

skyscraper size ferns and cycadedoids

pieces of cotylosaur and protorosaur skeletons

ignorant of the famed Lystrosaurus

whose fossils prove India Africa and Antarctica were connected

we did not understand then

VIII.

all within the cosmic dust swirling around us

all buried deep beneath earth we traversed

all within us

as we sit