Soul Mates
Have you ever had a soul mate? We usually think of soul mates as people who are in romantic relationships, but there are other kinds of soul mates. Could they be sisters? Uncles? Children? Let me know if you have had similar soul mates after you read the poems about my three soul mates.
Soul Mate One
1
Tree limbs beside the weathered cottage
Sway in the blue sky.
He stands behind her.
His hands resting
On her shoulders.
A flock of seabirds rises.
Her inhale matches his—a reflex.
Another bird flutters from the tree
As they both exhale.
She closes her eyes to capture the moment,
Consuming the peace from his soul,
Her mind slows its chatter.
2
As he lifts weights at the gym 2000 miles away.
She breathes his breath.
His blood circulates in her heart.
Her muscles warm.
Her heart beats faster with his efforts.
Still from afar he chuckles as he reads a book.
She is inexplicably merry
As her retina takes in the black and white.
A dear friend dies, and she is cloaked in grief.
She can sense his arm around her shoulder.
He knows her sorrow.
3
She wakes each day to a cup of tea
From the love of her life.
She is filled with contentment, pleasure, and love,
Even with this small gesture of affection.
The man, who is far away,
loves the warmth
And glow of her morning cup of tea.
On a day when the world is too much,
She closes her eyes and relives the tree limb
Swaying by the beach house and
Feels his peaceful soul.
In their own remote spaces,
These two minds are entwined.
The same heart,
The same esoteric emotions.
Their link is an enigma,
An ethereal secret, quiet and mysterious.
Soul Mate Two
1
My mind is on guard.
I hold the three-year old girl’s hand.
He approaches with suspicious eyes
Darting back and forth, and smiles.
His smile does not match his eyes,
angry, always angry.
Her hand trembles as she scoots behind me.
Her heart beats faster in my chest,
Her panic stampedes through my head.
I fight the urge to close my eyes like her.
Later, safe inside, she exclaims,
“That man would hurt little girls.”
2
“How was your day?” I ask her,
Now a goth-dressed teen.
She gazes with black-rimmed eyes,
At the table as if to find an answer there,
Hands wringing in her lap,
Her black shirt sagging over slouching shoulders.
I feel the knot in her stomach,
The churning criss-crossed synapses in her brain.
We wait for our food to come.
She wants to be with me.
She doesn’t want to be with me.
She takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself,
Straining to inhale my calm.
She is a wounded baby bird, fallen from the nest,
Hungry for help for the hurt, the ache.
That night we dream the same dream.
I am in a bare room with a chair
Where I sit. A man is there, shouting.
She dreams the same dream.
We know the man is different for each of us,
But we can’t escape.
Weeks later, I wake in the night,
Panic in the black, a weight on my chest,
Something ghastly has happened to her.
I cry her tears.
3
Now a woman, she works on a farm,
The same farm where I grew up.
It’s the old farmhouse, my childhood home.
In the basement where it happened to me,
Even though she doesn’t know,
Her mind spirals with shocking dread.
She sleeps under the night sky in the same farm field.
From miles away and generations apart, I see the same stars.
Soul Mate Three
We are seven years old in the soft morning light.
We are pioneers in a wagon train headed west.
The trail is muddy, and we dig out big rocks that block our way.
We are cowboys with clothesline lassos
Rounding up the herd,
She is the prairie grass feather-dusting our legs.
July noon-time sun bakes our skin and dries our mouths.
Her mother offers orange soda, not allowed at my house.
We sip the zesty drink, parched lips
On the edge of cool glass.
She is the effervescence tickling my nose.
She is the tiny bouncing red ball in the afternoon
As we play jacks, sitting legs splayed, in her driveway.
She is the soft fur of the rabbits we feed,
Soft noses and whiskers searching for food in our palms.
She is the bright orange and black butterfly,
Free and dancing in the breeze. With her, I too
Can be a butterfly, freed from my cocoon of fear.
We lie on our backs in the fresh-cut grass,
Take in the delicate scent and watch clouds
Change shapes as she holds my hand.
She is the cloud, free to change and become.
For in that moment, she takes me into that same space,
Safe and boundless.
A patch of daisies beckons us each day
From their far corner of the field.
She is my daisy, bright and full of hope.
We weave chains of flowers and their stems
And wear them in our hair.
Our hide-a-way by the brook remains intact
With fallen logs and branches making up our lean-to,
Broken pine boughs oozing fragrance in late afternoon heat.
She is my safe place, hidden deep in the forest.
She is the tree we climb, steady, predictable, welcoming,
Our feet clambering up and up to the top
Where we can see the whole forest, our world,
Just the two of us, like a peaceful melody,
Two singers, the same song.
We sleep that night on new-mown hay,
The sweet scent filling us as we open
A sac of her homemade chocolate chip cookies.
She is my chocolate chip cookie, made with love.
We survey a vast sky full of twinkling stars,
The Big Dipper, Little Dipper, the Milky Way.
She is my star, my hope for a bright future.
