Early summer morning,
Young sunrise above the sea.
Where his shadow falls
Over the grass I plant my life
Like a cluster of moss
Afloat on wind-stirred sea,
Flushing without roots,
Weirdly softening when the edges
Of his silhouette leans against
My empty handed longing.
Tonight, the rivers
Have frozen over
And bright summer days
Can’t even seem to bring us
Back together.
We sleep under the same
Black sky, but the stars
Seem to create different patterns
In our lives. Perhaps it is time
To let our memories draw
Shadows in the snow and simply wait
For the sun to rise.
I still see you
In the ripples of Silver
In the shallows.
Like tips of wings
Carving into
The mirrored
Winter sky,
Blushing
In the pale dawn.
Do not offer me the ocean
When I am thirsty,
Like the sleeping flowers
In winter
I am nourished by longing,
By the glimpse of chasing lights
Across a pitch black sky.
Show me only a bird
When I want to fly,
And I will spend my life
Growing wings.
You gave me all your days,
They came and went
With rocks and weeds,
Brambles and blossoms.
Now I give you all my tomorrows,
Softly above haze,
Or thorny in graceful loneliness,
With gales and hush,
Hale and summers,
They are all yours.
Of all the gifts of grace
Nothing is as precious as longing.
We see it in the meeting
of sky and hoarfrost:
A white-haired aerial world
Fighting the elaborate rules of time.
Or in the quiet of the night sea
Without a single light to reflect.
We see it in the singing hazels
Bleeding into sleeping clouds,
And in the waning sun’s burgundy
Burning the past in its hand.
But most of all we see it in people,
Walking side by side,
Young and growing, old and leaning,
Always haloed by the dream of tomorrow.
It was in the absence
Of something
The questions arrived,
And life
twisted and turned
To shove the horizon
A bit further.
