NPM: Confluence

You and I 

Are two different streams

Each flowing in its own course

Carrying different debris and trace elements

Our different sources 

Influencing our composition

But here our courses have met

In this peaceful pooling

Our confluence

There are times when floods upstream

Send us crashing into one another

Churning up the waters

The currents fighting and clashing

But there are also times

When we meet so beautifully

So smoothly gliding along into one another’s path

And we find that we are of one accord

And that two can be better than one

That the waters are fresher and sweeter

At their confluence

Mostly Water

We’re mostly water,

You and I.

And I wonder if,

Like the tides,

We are pushed and pulled,

Bullied by the moon.

I wonder if its gravity

Draws and repels us,

Causing us to act

Or hesitate.

Are we as relentless and determined

As the ocean waves?

Throwing ourselves again and again

At our boundaries

Till they wear down to sand.

Or are we as fickle and fleeting

As a summer rain?

One moment, gentle and light.

The next, tempestuous and raging,

Then just as suddenly, gone.

We’re mostly water,

You and I.

I know because

There is no end

To the tears we cry.

NPWM Day 23: The Louvre

The Louvre is so filled with masterpieces

that one doesn’t know

whether to feel awe or apathy.

Crowded in amongst Caravaggios and Pugets,

the tourists shuffle inch by inch

to view the masters.

But outside those carved marble halls

are shallow, flat pools

that reflect the facades

of the opulent wings of the building–

Denon, Sully, Richelieu.

Even their names are decadent.

Those mirror pools also reflect

the modern, simple

glass and metal pyramids

that emerge from that sumptuous ground

like progress, like industry.

And though there are riches untold–

oil paintings, sculptures, frescoes–

contained within,

it is the exterior of the Louvre,

those peaceful rippling pools,

the slow cigarette-burn of dusk,

that overrides the senses

and remains vibrant in memory.