Translations frequently differ;
sometimes it means
you feel good tonight.

I trace my dedication
       to you
with a fingernail pen,
delighting at the way
the pale inscription
       on you
blossoms with breath.
Anyone else would
blush at this verse
       but you;
I am never more a poet
than in these moments,
       with you:
this casual meter
       between us
built of shivering.

in your dark eyes
disguised
as stardust
is spirit rust

She’s the daughter I never had,
All grown now, I am not her Dad.
All her childhood, I did not see
And yet, somehow, she seems like me.

She’s the daughter I never knew,
Only close to her a time or two.
Of my influence she's completely free,
And yet, somehow, she thinks like me.

But now I have a fleeting gift,
Of time with her to fill the rift.
Paths long parted finally blend,
I believe that she is now my friend.

Even if we had never met,
Her path to success has long been set.
She needs nothing that I have to give,
To live the life she is going to live.

And so, although I’ll never be a Dad,
I hope to provide what she has not had,
Shade underneath my family tree,
And a chance to know someone like me.