my love, you are neither the morning
with her bright unwinding hills

or the night, with her nets of silver stars,
you are not the sea whispering.

you are hidden from the world, an alpine
rose that nobody sees.

you flower like the sky makes its way
out of the dark, her archipelagos  

thrown to the wind, there to discover
like a frost that whitens the earth and

leaves its footprints in the leaves.

you are neither the moon, my love,
that waits at your feet

nor the sun that burns like the
summer with her mute fire. you

are none of these things and yet all  
these things carry me to you,

like a drifting cloud longing
for the waters of the night.

the wind has something of your wild song,
whispers in a voice i knew long ago.

there is nothing here accept the empty wind,
nothing of you and me,

i could paint the silence with the moon,
kiss your mouth, touch your hair....

but we are forgotten like this song
of the wind, and in the emptiness

i can hear the faltering wave
fall against the belly of the sand

running like the white clouds
race through the sky,

where the stars fall like old ruins,
this ghost dance of stars, these crashing,

crashing waves. where is the freedom
of the falling water?

not in the breath of the earth,
not in the silvering of the sea.

we seek the ocean in the palm of our hands,
breath is the frailties of a winter sky,

the stars are reflections in a mirror of bone.

we are carried by the wind into strange avenues
where we fall like leaves, dance into the indigos

of the washed out sky, haunt the dimming light like night
blossoms and dies, her rivers burning like fire.

we awaken in the eastern
sky washing slumber from our eyes, yawning

and day drops her heavy nets into the waters
of the sun and drowns out the voice of the dark.

flowers settle in the morning, capturing
the silence of the hills in petals of water and light,

and we drink passion and ink, we drink the colours
of our emotions and walk without hesitation towards the light.

All, thanks for the many years of continuous support from Hello Poetry, comments (both praise and constructive criticism), and continuing to share our mutual love of poetry.

I am pleased to announce the release of my new book, Poems of Ancient Rome and Greece (of course, what else), in both paperback and Kindle formats with many of the poems on Hello Poetry revised and several new poems as well.  These copies are available on Amazon so please visit my author page for the paperback and Kindle versions:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Christopher-Saitta/author/B0DRTSZSZH?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Anyway, much thanks, and here is one of the new poems.

To the Sky

Once more, comb your skiey streaks of hair,
Backbrush to sombrous chamber,
While the vanity mirror flares its celestial impulse.

The corner of the room is a privation like monastic air,
Its angularity, the ascetic to your fleshened curves,  
More fitting for a candle fasting itself bare,
Relinquishing shine to that spare resurrection in the panes.

So too your summers have flamed upon the windows,  
And autumn has fizzled in spurts of leaves,
So too the failed days are sublimely worshipping  
To a soul that is the glass between.

Love is this placelessness of sunlight,
Earth, the memento of where we touched once:
  Her haystack-gold of hair, his shy, straw whisper,  
  And the footpath that still dwindles there to sunlight's pebbles.
  So warm is the insubstantial, substance of love.

From these paths, the world wanders old,
Upon its crooked staff of trees, its absent-mind dozed into hollows:
  No more sipping at Christ's wound,
  Like a glass soul filled with wine,
  Or tasting his body's amaranth
  In bee-breads fabled to divide.

Where lovers meet, death comes to adore.
Every kiss should prove monument to the world that wastes in air,
Every love should spurn its centuries to that steeped exile of elsewhere,
And break time like shells upon the shore.


II


Shut the blinds to the duller desuetudes of sun,
Because evening itself is a falling in love,
Because moods are the seasons homespun,
And death's great measure, if it comes,
Will be padded upon hand-woven rugs.

So begins the conceit,
Spring its slippered caprice,
Subdued to the stairs, the down-turnings and creaks,
Until table-spread as the meadowed indulgence of the dining room,
Where mornings have had their honeys,
And the berries and creams were guilty pleasures past noon.  

From the china closet and its glass goblet fruit,
Pluck the pome of a teacup
And pour the brook of brews:  
  Within the china pattern of leaves,
  The forest-dark shades of tea
  Are wheeling with subtle complexion
  Of black-currant and grey and darjeeling,
  As if the world could sway so wholly under the thumb,
  As if the woods were a coercion of vapors sapient
  Over their fire-flared stratums.

In mute, cupboarded moments,
To learn the only sound of the soul,
Is rain along the glassings of bay windows,
Is April too lightfelt to hold, only to lose.

Like a nightjar, startle through the storm whorls and raindrop leaves,
Fluster from the ragged brink of Spring,
To presage the distance in shady inklings.
And so then sail to Summering,
Dry until vaporous wings leave cooled tatters like clouded light:
  To dry the sodden absence of a lover,
  Feel your frayed fingers through his sky-blue sleeves.
  Loop the tassel of hair through the collar,
  As before the looms with an armful of yarns to weave.
  Once more the windfall of hair,
  Like smothered lightnings to the static mass of air,
  In strike-soundings, a confession to the cloth,    
  For man to adorn what woman must bare.

Click the lampshade light, the yellowed Autumn of album leaves,
Thinking back is your lying down to sleep.
Fall is the seduction of the sky,
An innuendo of slight denudings,
To lure the human sun from its fleshened prime,
Into leering lusters and willowy fingers to writhe.

Make your skyward sleep,
Past the kitchen that keeps its silence of floors,
A bare reminder of what the snows are for:
Sleep is the only snowfall of the mind, heavy-worlded and pieced,  
Outlying the hushing deep of pines.    

To the sky, great remnant of Greece,
Which has of human lips their redness,
But of love, still its thought to speak,
Mouthing hollow as the wide-open world.

Astra memories play forth in my head.
Star showers create endless wishes.
Plasmoid cycle their cosmic colors.
Seraphic tones turn into ethereal melodies.

Celestial trails in the dark wilderness.
Empyrean trees drop their light leaves.
Transcendental visuals of the night heavens.
Diaphanous veils of tranquilly allow my eyes to see.

Sheer emotion alloy.
Paradisiacal vessel of the expanding universe.
Expedition of endless wonder.
Fathomless destinations to reach.

This light was not only beautiful.  
It was what you call heaven I believe.
The onslaught radiance sang across the cosmos.
A song about a forbidden divinity that should never occur.

No darkness there could stop it.
All shadows died and became light.  
The light crunch had taken over.
And I was the last darkness.

The balance was gone.
No darkness for the stars to roll on.
No darkness to sleep in.
Just eternal dawn and forgotten dusk.

out of the water, the water of ghost pools,
you rose, naked figurehead, oh, flower of night.
an impressionist's brush shook the water
like light reflected on moonstone.
****** of prisms, flowering, flowering,
lost ocean of star voices, forgotten star.
you sang and the night ran towards the sea,
you blossomed and the night became a wanderer.
nectar of the gods, sky-visionary, you sink into
the night like the petal of a rose, the grass almond-
eyed and whispering to you her dreams, fluttering
like a butterfly; little moonflower, you gather
the shadows and the song of the dark, the
drift of the clouds is your bare feet running,
the drift of the clouds, the cold sea crashing
in the harbour, the drift of the clouds,
the incredible overflowing of sky, poet-
ink and straying hair, the drift of
the clouds, everything that scatters
like you on the wind.