When the moment arrives, it arrives like this:

Dark, like the hour of the silent stars
the hour of the shrill crickets,
the hour of waning hopes,

when all is dark
in my soul:

Friend, at this moment,
I cease the world;
At this moment,
just you and I in the entire universe;
Silent companion, guardian
of the door to all mysteries,

the cause of all causes,
if I must reason like that,
or an unknowable vast,

unknowable, as I am, now,
but an essential knowledge
in some mystic part
of my own hidden,
concealed being,

if I am of sterner stuff than
the pyres that churn out the stars,
if I am of firmer strength than
the cutting arms of time,

reveal this now, friend,
for this is my dark hour,
the loneliest hour
before the eclipsed dawn.

I.

The door stands outlined in white:
in this dark night, a presence
weighs in from the corridor.

The fan holds a garbled reflection
of stray light on its illusory blade-disk.

I'm talking about parthenogenesis.

How can renewal be born, when
creativity loses her companion,
freedom?

This monotone life lugs on.

II.

The tree shrugs the question off
by her parting arms half-illumined
by the streetlamp.

The late bird of five calls flew away
to a far-off tree, couldn't be
bothered more.

I hear a voice
soft in the setting chill of the distant autumn:
choked eyes beaming in love.

I seek palingenesis.

Check all emails and ensure zero
unread. But
answer none, follow up
nothing.

Umpteenth time through the day.

III.

Autotomy all over again.
Habits
die like tails, to be grown
all over again.

This is an etiological myth.
An apocryphal story that
renews itself on the palimpsest of life.

I must cut my nails.

This tea has brewed too dark.

There is a song that skins remember.
A line that resounds in silences.
A form the heart revisits
in fervid recollections.

That you must not speak,
that you must not speak.

Silences can ****.
No need to ask Crusoe.

Stars that explode in suicide:
From aeons of tortuous silences,
from distant companions,
silently cold.

Yes, our silences talk. Sorry, this
was not how it was supposed to be.
Strains of there we go again.

Gulfs of empty spaces between
silent vales, that birth the
mourning winds.

Murmurs leap out like dolphins
out of our silences.

Waiting to hear each other. Past
the dirge at the grave of my errors.

I close my eyes and remember the haze
Of long hot summers; man those were the days.
Not a care in the world, searching for purpose.
The depths of my being, just touching the surface.

I remember the beauty of innocence and joy.
Oh I remember when I was a little boy.
But now I am grown, responsibility abound.
Every now and then I remember that playground.

King of the swingset, without a crown
Climb up to the top, slide all the way down.
In the blink of an eye it's time for dinner
When I think of these days I feel so much better.