The shoreline isn't what it used to be.
It's staggered now; the smoothness has regressed,
and aquamarine ice is stinging the water
like a knife. The room itself is warm,
though stifled with smoke and dust. We go out
in the night and inhale.
The cold smells nice. Where is the moon?
Where are the stars? All I see are city lights to the south,
and an unbreakable darkness in the east.
I miss the sound of moving water,
and I dream of summer.
But how I love these winternights, tucked beneath blankets
and snow. An interval to the dissonance
of a January that is too warm, too dry.
In the early dawn, the sky is periwinkle darkened,
and the waves crash me a song reminiscent of you.

I see her there, the lady you will make
a mother out of. Oh, look at her youth,
she is a child herself, a girl forsooth,
with comely features lust will one day take.
Oh sweet child, hear my voice and do not wake,
you'll say. Inside you slithers God's sharp tooth,
his precious boy who'll die for sin and truth:
And then you'll watch him burn upon a stake.
She stirs now, with demons clad in white
or angels in the frost. My darling girl,
I'll shield you of the things they'll do with this:
A robe of heaven's blue, to catch starlight
and frame your face; let loose your swarthy curl
and let me wake you with a sacred kiss.

read this later,
so I thought it something else. The only thing between us is laughter.
Your eyes are touchstones
and you leave to let me be, then come back and
we are like this.
Close and then months apart,
everything in between is irrelevant when we unite.
In the mirror I examine this person,
not left wondering until the evening ends.

come into me, like a snowflake on the pine
and I'll infuse my sappy kisses on your eyelids, love
and you'll become an emerald song in the wind

or crash into me like an icy wave in mid-November
and run your fingers between the spaces of rock on the breakwater,
chilling the birds.

Tumble into the fabric of my arms. Embroider your love into my skin.

These waters shimmer with memory;
watch as they glisten, flowing on the cusp of this age and the next.

Earthy, brown, depthless pools;
lacustrine, surging on the precipice of pearly shores,
enriching me as I look in

and see the tide's truest nature looking back at me.
Ancient and clandestine, too,
the place where youth and wisdom dwell