there is nothing of you in this late hour,
i have no voice to wrap you in tenderness,
and i wait for your arrival like a starless sky,
empty of light, the ocean's forgetful voyage,
the sinking wave coaxed to grow out of the dark.
the trees are motionless, branches fall silent in the night,
like ghosts against the sky. i am empty of light,
drawn out of memories and blue air,
a crystal that breaks, bound to the wide earth
and the white dust of immeasurable hills. i think i am
still, small as a bird, and i know that i long for you,
that the hunger never leaves me for long, colouring
dry paper with the gleam of a harbour-like moon.

I rollover on the bed
face the wall
stare at the lines and cracks.

I give the wall a talking to,
tell me lies. I'll tell you my lies.

and i'm telling the wall,
the future looks bright. i'm planning
my own crazy, this time,

i use a black magic marker,
draw a wide rectangular
picture window across the white wall, then

sand, seashore, and sea stacks in the ocean.
can you smell the salt air?
i'm asking my wall.

don't look at me cracks,
like that.

the wall sighs,
and the bones of this old building
reply with a moan.

i'm inventing my own madness, so

look,
the sand pipers
are darting here and there
across the sand
avoiding the gentle lapping of the waves.

and the long wing shearwaters
flying low, gliding,
just barely above the tips of waves.

i'm planning my own foolishness.

some loves last for so long
like a song without a name
and you never know
when love will walk into a heart

and I'm going to run
far away
from sidewalk ledges
rooms with cracks in the wall,
far away from here.

and, Oh, wall, hang not the albatross around my neck.

the light, the faint curtain that draws across day,
far from night's shadows, creature of fire,

revolves, drops white nets into the sea-earth,
where ice and the aching frost cry out

and the soil hardens with its harsh, freezing edge.

we are deaf and blind, numb of limb
like the thin trees and the specter-sky,

blue and forlorn, dreaming our winter dreams...

and through the cold walls i can hardly draw
a smile, sad as a silver leaf the autumn forgot.

it is you who lifts me from the ground, somehow,
like an april shoot seeking the sun, somehow,

my bones as frail as a bird and yet
when the air stirs my blood and i stare into

the amber notes of the wind, the unforgiving land
buckles and breaks and i return to the

kernel of your heart and even the icy
lakes and the weighty forest you loved

under your skin that the light waits to
warm, forget their cold death, breathe

like summer returning to a distant shore.