The mirror's dark other half looks back at me in the dark of the morning

the whole street's asleep still, moonlight wavering and waxing to its peak

the lake is still frozen beyond the harbour, two islands joined by an ice corridor

the sound of the guitar a part of the darkness, a piece of the morning, a song before the birds wake.

A stag lifts its head,
moonlight drapes across its back—
the woods watched over.

You're the wayward star, blinking patterns in the sky,
burning lifetimes away;
you love god, kiss losers, hold close to the dying;

throwing yourself off the cliff of your potential as the lunatic who hies to the tall cliff and leaps into burning oblivion,

anchored now to a man who speaks at you and never could see you,
only feel your youth and covet your mind.

-

Jane! What wretched choices you were maybe forced to measure, for the shortcomings of your era.

Be the voice in the woods, the single song for the morning.

One person like steam on the horizon in a winter morning as the sun rises

stuck in the awe of them, the way of them, the transientness of knowing how soon the day will move on,

be over but that feeling lingers

I'll go out to the summer for you, friend,
lay amongst the wildflowers blowing in the sacred wind,
you like a lover oceans away. There's the building, though, where you
are sleeping, and the hearth burning on and on and on, keeping you.

I am restless without you. You are the air to my passion and I the breadth of your flame:

consume me, Helen. You know what I say beneath the ire for which I am named,

and I crumble into you on my final sleepless night. You held off death for months so we could be together one last time,

seeping into each other as you become a saint in midsummer

in a dream, the frozen expanse brims with colder water

but her and her father stood still as the water hummed below them, seeped through the cracks

a voice caught in the throat, a psalm for this frozen bay

as winter swells with yearning for the sparrow, for the stream.