These sleepless blue nights,
When dawn is kept at arm’s length,
And melancholy winds tickle my skin
With the warm breath of eternity.
I wake up dressed in sheets of snow,
As though an angel had left behind
A scattering of feathers,
Covering me in its innocence.
I can still see it, like sea foam
Or snow adrift on iced over lakes.
Like words hanging from trees
Heavy with their winter whipped load.
Like days and days of quiet shimmer
When the moon falls upon earth,
Sharp and steady, like the dip
Of a bird’s tail,
Leaving an ephemeral time stamp
Like the shadow of a robin in a white field.
But that is how it is with angels,
It is always that which we cannot trace
That we remember the longest.
Your halo follows the fashion
Of bamboo, growing faster than an inked heart
On tear-stained paper.
You fear the words with heavy wing-span,
But despair has never torn at your knuckles.
You are the hoarfrosted fields: white gowns
Hiding the poverty underneath.
But you are also a butterfly,
Skimming life’s feet without storing grief
To season the summers.
While the winter birds sigh in the canopy
You remain aflame, dipping your answers
In the mute desert, like a red dawn
Fertilized by the talons of night.
It is the song of the interior mind
That pours through the urban vacuum.
Meadows of coasts weighing down bridges
And extinguishing cactus butterflies.
It is the tall grass of the fells
That still move to the beauty
Of your short-cut youth.
And even though the years sigh
Through your white, soft folds,
The wayside sea still pour out of you
Like a sun-drowned night.
And I think you, with your heather crown
And mussel ears, must be
The echo of a one-winged Angel
Left on a winter beach
A cold and lightless night.
Today, the Cottongrass
On the marsh on my way to work
Feels softer and more like home
Than the wings of Angels
Evanescently stroking my heart.
When Love overflows into Light
It will mend your way home
And dance eternally
like stars upon the aftermath
Of your life.
I never really wanted roots, I wanted wings instead,
something to take me away to those places
I believed I belonged to.
I got those wings, and I taught myself
how to fly. But the wings
never stayed on for long,
and each time I fell,
I fell harder, until I
was covered in bruises.
But then you came along,
and even though you didn’t have
any wings, and you didn’t know
how to fly, you rooted those wings
right unto my back,
and they became truly mine
at last,
and I picked you right up and took you with me,
and I, and we, never fell again.
