O, my lover knows
how love dances in the silences of souls --

we speak but in solemn kisses,
our two souls hanging in the dark;

though he is far from me, I pledge my pain
though he is nearer now, I wait for him in song
though we are reunited, he has spurned the morning dew.

Have the dead repose?
O, my lover knows
how love dances in the silences of souls

O, my lover knows
that love dances in the silences of souls --

And I have not wept
for the pain that loss has given me,

but instead for the sight of starlight,
for such love rendered me blind.

And did I know
how wretchedly I would be kept away,
by and by, in love's endless eddies?

As shadows pass the moon's face,
should he pass, I'll look not
for my soul reigns free

If I am the mountain, then you are the shepherd
if you are the shepherd then I am the flock
if I am the flock then you are the mountain

we can part without a final glance and then follow one another until we are called to face each other in the morning

A woman said: if you want him, come and claim him.

I thought I had been waiting for your rushing voice to soothe the river between us;

rather, I needed to know of its swiftness,

of your cowardice to crossing it.

As lovers thrash the confines of their making,
as sunlight yearns to touch the palest eye,
as you would shed the dark and, upon waking,
take to the daring winter by and by

But for the distant music calling true,
soft moonlight now allumes her sight, unblinking:
Nor word, nor touch, nor sight, of lover, you
Who swims gold in the tide, unsinking.

Two strangers waltz beneath moonlight
where life is full --
swells high with the fish
in midsummer:

...on little nameless rivers or hidden brooks on whose banks Naiads might have sunned their white, wet limbs.

What covers you, what hides the shoal
that water loves, that winter stole?

What bleak nets would wound you tight,
to hide the basking rays of light

That glimmer on your frothy cliffs,
that pale in beams of pearly mists,

That cloaks your dark complexion. Why
are you now hidden from my eyes?

Splendid fronds: unfurl
from the wild, agrestal earth
and, unfurling, hurl
murmuring responses to the dashing surf

Bending, and then, bending, swirl
your silver to the emerald turf;
Hie to the towering tide, uncurl
your beads along the dew-soaked hearth

beneath the swelling, adamantine pearl
that beams its voice along the weathering earth.

water spun from silver streams
eagles on the shallow shore
pale mornings, pearl beams,
storms that echo thunder's roar

twilight cloaking mountain peaks
islands steep with plunging cliffs,
chiding waves and winds that sweep,
boughs caught in the summer drift

frothy tides and golden limbs
blinding light to taint the chill,
floating idly, fish that swim,
and watching them just for the thrill.

Like beads of cloud,
you froth on my wading ankles.
Spilling your allure -- timeless and
unwilling -- onto lupins
in the drift of your splendid foam,

and salt gathers in the spritely dew of your tide.

Slippery, as a fish.
You were born to the sea,
and breathe only by moving.

The pool's swirling
and the fish,
swimming in the dappled light,
have found me.

High currents are bursting at the rivers,
pouring Winter's splendour
to the cup of the sea.
Now sunlight will drink
from that eastern edge where its spilling gold bursts out --
and blinded, I will dip my fingers
in the wading wash of day.

Your word is kept by the promise of this:

a sun glowing in the brightness of dawn,
rivers flowing always to the sea,
grasses blowing in the summer's yawn,

so make your promise true to me.

Spray has christened the pines and firs in frost
at the waterfall.
Overtake me in the mist,
whirl your pointed pines
and infuse your senses
as you cover me in the spray.

Lapping idly,
bands swirling ankles with light:
weariless traveler.

-

When they fly back to northern shores,
assemble on the moonlit ice,
after long months of paradise
and call out to the darkening east:

the April Moon is for the Geese

Now that the year has come to Spring,
I want to see the lakeshore,
smell the green, hear birds sing,
taste sunlight in my core,
crown every flower king,
become enraptured and adorned
in sweeping streams, in the bee's sting,
in the haste of the hummingbird's wing,
in the thrill of the rushing spring
of the blooming months, the budding moor.

two figures in a storm:
but the storm is the spray
of the wind on the ice
as it melts in the warmth
of swans in the pale
beneath a full moon,

sweeping the pair
in the calm of the night.

is it uncouth to defile spring so,
with the layering of heavy-laden snow
when I could see the grass,
walk unphased beneath the pass,
taste sweetness in April's blast
of wind infused with scents that grow?

Two pairs of hands:
they coalesce in the drawl,
the duet shaping them
anew.
In the other room,
four bodies, carved by song.

sunflowers, peonies, dandelions, maple trees,
daisies, buttercups, forget-me-nots, lupins,
the lilac bush, white, pink, purple, all over the city for a brief time
the apple blossoms in the dying apple tree,
helicopter leaves on bushes, fragrant pollen for honey bees,
cool air and warm sun, the spray of a windy day on the air,
the smell of summer sun weaving through my hair,
I forget the youth of may, the long sunset-glare
across the lake, the twilight moon, the taste of pear
and fresh strawberries, and the feel of dew
seeping through the mesh of my shoe, freezing my toes,
fires into midnight and fireflies and flights of freedom,
and sublime
woven into spring and summertime.

I've been craving the carved part of me that you carry, dear friend

all I want is to dance, in the deep of the night
in a room full of people. we only have short years until
it's wrong to go out and dance. let me dance
with my friends, it's the middle of the
night; I can people watch. Looking back
on last night, we were like a school of fish
with shimmery emerald bodies.

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.

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.

Hillsides of endless green roll
like clouds before a storm,
but they are stilled by the mountain.
And within that valley, a boy no more than what life's made of him yet:
he will go on to foreign places and make them home,
grow into a place that he does not know,
build things, and a family. And he told me of that merry place
locked into the ether,
where a teacher made honey from the bees and gave a jar to his mother,
a gift. For nothing, for they were poor and so was the teacher,
and the honey was gold in his mother's hands.

I'm asking genuinely now, not that I ever knew  
to be true, it is hard though plain;
it is phone calls in the summer, on the cusp of rain
and glad to know you do not see my face, although
my voice gave me away within that hour (or two?)

I'll be here when the snow is frozen over,
Kissed by moonlights ethereal glow,
And when its gaze emits exposure
To the humming, frozen undertow,

The lake will groan in midnignt's cover,
And in the morning light as mists suffuse,
Revealing ice: dawn's venerated lover,
A winter tryst and draped in pale blues.

There's a spring in my mind, and we sit near it together
and there's a silence between us, charged with the memory of winter and summer and pelicans on the shore.
You close your eyes in prayer, but I keep mine open and watch you
in this eastern light, thanking someone.

The ocean, the lake, the water is lapping with the phrase
moments in time, and I hear you next to me.
We stare at this expanse and are next to one another. I don't have to look at you, to say a word,
just this moment is like a well in the earth, springing with fresh water from the dark, into my arms,
fulfilling me.

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

I step down to glean
the petals in the pond, that softly stir
when the muse plucks her instrument;
they have been blooming an eternity here,
in this cave. She has brought them up on this music,
and my tear fractures the ripples
when I hear the song;
I cry.

stand too close,
and bite me.
I will lead the way
through people, swarms and swarms of them,
hold tight
and take me to that view of ours:
we close our moments with the lake in mind.

leaves loosen from limbs
and the smell of apples sweetens the air

I follow you to the top, to the peak. You  laugh and I know
we are for each other in this life,

despite the weather, the path, the season.

The whole way in I thought about how courage is a ring,
and I found it on the hike

what does the utterer give to the prayer?

I love harshly,
in the thicket with sword
I will not yield,
I'll be your shoulder, your shield

the life breathing in will quell the dread of a burning day before you; for, in the mornings, the air is fresh and chilled,
and you may graze in the openness

until the flowers fulfill you,
awaken you.

Take your forest path, your field trail, the one you marked yourself
for these moments. And bring the dogs,
let their leashes be loose,
let your soul be freed here, in this scenery.

spring is hardly sure it loves the summer sun,
till the wind is warm and fruitful.