Journalism Love

Our story is and ever will be
there above the fold, love's
byline on each article about the way
we met. So write the caption for the pictures
if you dare to share. The dummy was written
long ago, but now it's extra! extra!
read all about it, You made fair use of my heart,
filling the gutter between our lives and merging with
hard news as only you could do.
There's no inverted pyramid here -- every bit's important,
from the jump line linking details of that time
to this, a love that never sees its story killed, 
exciting lede but even better as it goes.
No one will find our story in the morgue'
because a love like this is ever Now,
just you and me together on the nameplate
never mind the op-ed conversations that oppose
and can not understand. A press release for what and who
we are can wait, our quotes are worthy of
a Pulitzer, each one profound and fresh. Do not retouch
a single snap of what you see, don't give the scoop
just yet for fear a typo will mislead.
One day the wire will be ablaze with news, no need for
yellow journalism making more than what it is,
no cause to make our love a zoned edition
for a love like ours can not be limited
to time or space or circulation boundaries,
no whim of publisher,
no copy editor of what we feel and know.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2016

Solitary Dip

The half moon shining there above me

does not care, but if it did,
it could not see me as I doused the light
and laid aside the towel wrap
and stepped into the swirling heat
not so unlike my entry into this reality
so many years ago,
Just bone and muscle
moving silently beneath the water
clothed with softness and with skin
that sags a little here and there
but in the darkness feels as beautiful
as when I was a girl.
No eyes can see me here,
no husband's, child's,
no neighbor's nor a stranger's,
only angels' up above
who never blush
but sometimes laugh at
all our silly notions of
what constitutes a sin, a shame,
embarrassment at what the very
hand of God has sculpted.
Now discreetly settled
I experiment with all the buttons
to increase the bubbles' dance
until a sudden, unplanned sun illuminates me
as I celebrate the joy and simple silence
of clear water and the night time
and a woman all alone.


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2016

Fallen Star

Just one balloon, of all the rest
(perhaps it smelled the coffee
from the breakroom) and
fell to earth to slither out of sight.
For days, the other mylar stars and it
all shone against a sky marked off
in neat acoustic grids,
but wanting an adventure,
quite surprising everyone who'd seen
them hanging there, this singular balloon
emitted sighs, excited yet discreet.
and so began its slow descent to rest
upon the field of neat
looped carpeting below.
And somehow sniffing out a current,
soon it caught a wave of air
and rode it to the door and down the hall,
negotiating turns,
delighting everyone who saw it sweetly trav'ling on its way.
It must have stopped, a final gasp of helium,
before it came to rest
behind a shelf or underneath a chair,
but it had tasted freedom first.
How many stars can say the same,
how many have the courage
of celestial non-conformists
that are eager to escape the ancient orbits
of the-way-things-are, have-always-been,
to find out what is just outside their vision,
those universes of what-else-there-is?


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2016