Like A Gardener

I grow quiet.
Quiet, grows.
If there is hope here, it is not beyond a reach
one might take with the length
of a sigh heard; surprised to realize
it must have been yours while alone,
and unprepared for what’s always been there.
Unprepared for a moment, unmeasured awareness,
un-accessorized by what's prefered, to what is
Just there.
Just

here, shadows have moved deeper through my bones.
Longer and denser while I become lighter - hollowed around them.
Hollow as the scaffolding informing a bird’s wing.

A concentration of images, a murmur that shines,
a Voice that Thrusts.
I have absorbed the impact
And been left shattered.
The words they carried scarcely mattered.

These dreams still in my tongue,
awoken mid-sentence.. Steep slopes,
always easier
to climb
for me.
Coming down - I try,
try to dig in my heels and
lean back, but even still, still
I slide. Gravity’s mercy is capricious
- at best, and absent entirely
from dream - or reckless and
prone to breaking its own laws.
There is nothing to break my fall.

A river carrying tiny lights.
Perhaps reflections or something very real.
Buoyant stars lost on roads they themselves created.
My voice lost in echoed things I shouldn’t have said, now
Eternally repeated.

History’s pulpit:
which increment of time to worship?
A locked down anniversary.
This moment has been before you, before
returning to me - worn down or built up
ridges of a dune, shifting in the night winds
that grow so cold even where the desert
hoards more than its fair share of the warmth.

Memory is always a visitation.
You - a traffic area through my heart, dark and threadbare,
A love that was lived in.
To buttress my standing, I stand now smothered
and alone amongst my crowds of ghosts.
Most are friendly, or I’ve learned to overlook
their brusque manners
And raw habits.
Indoctrinated into my own disbelief,
they look right through me
and life itself, becomes the phantom.