held in silence beside you.
still. having heard everthing;
my heart, my skin, have far eclipsed my ears.
i listen to you once and then
harmony, once and then dissonance, once and then again
the occupied silence familiar to lover's and composers.
dug out of a shared dream - excavated - lifted
to this world - still wet - sunlight melting
rich across my full tongue - somewhere,
our dream continues still without me
- now your face against my back,
my light still dripping from your fingertips -
my whisper shaping your arms all night -
a night - last - at last still healing gaps between us
'til ragged scars become our atonement.
a reconciled union
now again whole.
what have you done to time?
what, in me singing?
each note learning the air.
your gravity's lips press me to earth,
blow me to words; i take to the breeze like a vow.
wake to gather sound around me;
singular and new building just beneath my skin.
an olive leaf storing the sun so relentlessly and
dense-hued from green to purple to black.
all a shine of ceramic absences and tethered crows.
my eyelids bruised somewhere across sleep's lengths
or waking's crowded flash.
with a fine-grained indifference i've watched
myself slip through my own fingers.
if there's a word or a dream or
a premonition ....just by chance,
by why - unasked,
by where - unventured
or when - unmeasured, there is
you; a victor returning
and welcomed before arrival -
a telepath, a memory,
a voiceless candidate waiting to
brush away the sheen of smoke that
never held well to frozen-over fire,
where forest phantoms skate to split the flames.
a luster to solitude, a space
within emptiness - so captively comforted,
languid and just shy of peace ....
ease into me; walk with me awhile today.
it's eternity already.
so much more than might have been;
that nearly missed, and if tomorrow, lost in mist,
we can no longer match our gaits,
walk with me just now and let tomorrow wait.
