Serendipity

She’s driftwood, rocks and hollyhocks
He’s crashing surf and dreams
She’s mist and light and shifting sands
He’s storms and galaxies
He’s malachite and granite
She’s amethyst and pearl
The Tampa boy penultimate
A California girl
An ocean sings within his soul
The wild Floridian sun
Her heart lies ‘neath tangled vines,
the ferns of Oregon
He’s the Itchituknee River
and the salt of tropic seas
She’s Santa Cruz and Tillamook
and mossy mountain streams
She’s hummingbirds, the scent of rain,
a flash of mercury
He’s wood and smoke and sawdust
and Reggae memories
He’s swamps and oak and cypress
As true as mahogany
She’s gossamer, a moth’s wings –
steel fragility
She’s accompanied by Angels
Someday they’ll take her home
He has no faith in things unseen
so walks the world alone
He’s Stevie Ray
She’s Morrison
He’s Hendrix
She’s Supremes
She’s frosty margaritas
He’s rum and Heather Cream
Through all the drowsy summer days
and night soft with desire
He sparks
She’s incandescent
She melts
He’s raging fire
Some things in life are random
Some things are meant to be
By fate or chance or happenstance
they often disagree
All that’s really known for sure
is Life’s a mystery
full of unexpected twists
…serendipity

L. Harris

Was that you?
Whenever I think of perfectly-feathered 1970’s hair
I think of you
Whenever I hear a Van Halen song
I think of you
When I think of rain-pocked Portland nights
And drinking beer and cruising and cassette tapes
I think of you
And your friend, Larry, with the customized Vega,
That he was always tearing the rear-end out of by dumping the clutch
Remember?
We all went downtown to hang out
And I wore my Chinese dress with the Mandarin collar
And you said you might have to fight someone –
Remember?
You & Larry would jump out of the car around the corner from the gas station
And send me to beg for fuel
Remember?
I thought I saw you once
In a truck-stop in Corning, California
My breath caught in my throat as you/maybe you walked by
You nodded
Was that you?

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