Before I knew your name, I loved the fall.
I loved to see the leaves change, from green
(my favourite colour)
To yellow, orange, red and brown
Before falling from their branches to the earth below
Their scent sweet and wild
And I loved it.

I loved the fall because when I was young
My father would rake the leaves into piles
For myself and my siblings to play in
I loved the chill of the season
Seeing my breath in the crisp air
A tangible and ethereal sign that I was alive
I would play-pretend that I was a dragon
A dragon bundled in jacket, scarf and cap
Knocking  over the flimsy, leaf-made castles
Built by my brothers and sister
My father would fuss once the playing was done
At how we had made such a mess of his work
And then rake them into piles again
While I would peer under stones in the garden
To find snails just to see them
And I loved it.

Before I knew your name, I loved the fall.
I would wander the woods and sit by the streams
Watching turtles dig into the soft banks
Peering at the sharp, clear blue sky
Between the waving, windblown branches.
I would climb trees
Scrape knuckle and knee on the bark
Home in time for supper
Or at least bed
And I loved it.

But now that I know your name, I love the fall.
I love to see the leaves change from green
To the colour of your hair
(My favourite colour)
I love to watch them fall to the earth
In a windblown dance that dazzles and delights
And I am reminded of your smile
And I love it

I love the fall because since now I know your name
There is not one thing that I cannot find it in
Not a sound in nature that I do not hear it in
From the whistling wind between bare branches
To the murmur of the stream
To the exclamation points of footsteps on leaves
In the heady scent of the autumn forest I find you
In the cold on my ears and the backs of my hands
In the last bloom in the garden before winter
Which, when it comes, I will love
Because I know your name
And after that, each day, each season, until, in the end, they run out
I will love, because I know your name
Because I love your name
Because I love you.

There it looms
A dawn come before the sun
That you have stayed up all night to see

Let me awake, let me away
You cry, the sky grows brighter

The stars begin to swell

The moon is shattered by the light
So softly 'round the edges
Her face of white and black and grey
Bleeds away its darkness
Is swallowed by the night
Is drowned by the night

Let me flee, let me fly
You cry
The heavens are an ink-blot reversed
A bright stain spread to all horizons

The sun will rise in its time
But the sky, the moon, the night
Are white

Let me away, and let me fly

In dying I found my life
In that life, death, and back again
Each time you spoke my name I was reborn
And we strode to that brink where
Fate, Love, Death and Stars collide
In ecstasy, insanity, in warmth
Taste and touch become glory's senses
And beauty of form cannot be
Dimmed, diminished, destroyed
Because it is all that exists
We still speak with lips
With tongues and teeth but without words
We drink life through our hands
Warmth through our eyes
Love becomes the only language
We will ever understand
Time passes without notice
Guard falls, music is shut out
Until your heartbeat is my own
And my thoughts come from your mind
And I dream without knowing I slept
And awake to my smiling dreams

I am bound, yours, from this day
To the end day which is not
By resolve that shames iron or steel
For the heart wills what it will
And those golden cables can nothing fray
A million gloried bands draped between souls
Into a soul entwined, enclosed
Contained into a single form
Divinely crafted into that highest potential
That neither man nor death may split asunder
Where there is no beginning or end
To what we are, and what we are is this:
My heartbeat in your chest
Your breath in my lungs
And these million bands of gold bridging
My soul, your soul
To one

The price paid, begrudging none
The True Debtor knows the cost
Parts willingly, and would again
Should ever more be required
Feeling each moment that more is owed
Though so little, so little is asked

Giving all, every drop
Of heartsblood for the cause
For none greater exists
Nor could such ever be risen above
Always asking, What more, what more
Can I, to you, bestow?

And the smile, the touch, alone
Are the given response
Satisfying, overwhelming
The True Debtor, with luck unmatched
Pays again, 'til naught remains
But neither fades nor diminishes

And so Love moves the two
Each feeling the debt
Each paying their all, their all again
Until it cannot be said to whom the other belongs
Until they cannot be told apart

As high as God will allow, he stands
Back to the world, artificial lights
There blinking and glowing, the sky above orange
Eyes reflecting moon, and star
And the black sky clear, and cold, and clean
He can smell it in the air, the wind carries it
All those fallen snow dreams, the icicle hopes
Broken beside the road, turned to slush and mud
While only a few steps away lay the whitest drifts,
The purest that has fallen
He wonders, Where did I fall?
In this night where the black sky glows blue
From the stars and a moon just beginning to wane?
And he cannot give the answer.
Because he cannot see the wind
Making his fingers and lips as blue as the sky
That would be black without the moon
That would be hollow without the stars
That could not be touched where he stood
Even if God allowed it

Once the dawn rose, and I with it
You, in me, came along
And we watched the world awake from atop this peak

You sang a song
My heart, in me, burned like the sun
Never had I felt its like before

A star, in my chest, in my throat, in my mind
In me
And I in it, and it was you

And I was burnt alive, down to cinders, ash
The dawn rose, in me
And set, and died