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On waking gently

The eyes make the soul porous;

they let a gentle morning

travel inwardly,

impossible to resist,

forceful in loving.

Summer rain and electric fan blades

converse with one another,

Soft humming antiphony,

heavy and fragile;

It has an ocean’s weight.

And with sleepy imprecision

I place my ear to the shell

where my dream,

The dream you inhabit,

is retreating and

you sound like water flowing away from the shore.

The covers feel like the touch of your body,

For just a moment;

It has inherited my heat and gives it back to the skin

Like a borrowed coat in the warm evening.

But your form is prouder than that -

Resistant, unyielding -

And the soft folds, so kindly irresolute, guide me a new place,

(A clearing, in the forest where memory and premonition grow with branches touching)

Where one might

With sharp inhalation, bracing,

Anticipate a heart that aches -

But instead of absence,

I find this morning

- grey and sweet -

And tenderness.

Untitled

Sometimes the world breaks my heart

idly

Performing nothing,

Like your twitching eyelashes

Moving pixels like wild grass swaying

As you felll asleep

And made me your audience

To your minute orchestral movements

Through the screen.

The evening is an impossibility;

the sunlight, and it’s reflection on the water

As I walk on the sea wall, with you in mind,

Are entranced with one another,

A closed loop that

sings with permanence.

A heron stands, thoughtless and intentional,

Between the islands of dry green seaweed

And the scene asks me to accept it

without question;

It reveals, gently,

The mirage of myself,

Where clumsy stabs

at love left only

formlessness.

I feel, for a second,

That if I can walk around this circular stretch

Forever,

I can stay here

gazing beyond searching  

And acquiesce to love’s desire

To fill the gaps between

Myself

And where you sit

Where the heart of the world lies.

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Aubade

When the grief came crashing in

it reflected the dawn light coolly,

And returned a different hue

Once it had pooled on the floor of memory.

A gleam, crystalline, threadlike,

leads an arching path

to where those waters moved invisibly,

back to where your body lay in the half darkness,

Encircling your form with frigid stars,

beginning

At the soft space behind your ear - where whispers dissolve -

Where forever began gently and unknown.

That thread, bands around my fingers,

Vibrates with the hum of your breathing;

How those moments collected until the room shimmered,

Sound and light -

Love and tension -

following your pulse’s march towards dawn.

And in this vision, I can see your eyes opening again,

reflecting the first light

At the beginning of a new life,

And I knew then,

This constellation, strung out,

Would form the texture of remembering,

Until it only motioned to your form,

Longing to rest, to feel your weight,

Once your body had disappeared with the changing of the light

Leaving only an inscription:

To love without mythology,

Written in the shadows of the folds of the bed.

The day shines wildly now, as if to shout - wide-eyed, ecstatic with pain,

to anyone -

Love is letting go!

But behind the eyes and in the space where love breathes

In the deepest space of the chest

The light glows blue still.