And so I walk upon this stage of life
Set before this night of a thousand eyes
Sans players and bereft of drum and fife
My given charge to sift the truth from lies,
To extract from the ore of distant past
Some kernel of what the years ahead may hold
And though I know full well the die is cast
My gestures and speeches long since foretold
And I am content with the part I play
In this warhorse my fathers have composed
Though other dramas are now underway,
Sad and hackneyed things which I had supposed
Would proceed, my presence not required.
The director demurred when I sent regrets
And so that preordained was what transpired,
This life no stroll upon the parapets.

What is that sound, when water meets water.
Sometimes far off, like fine down drifting
then close by, giving everything in hard metallic bursts.
A man and a girl like you, once met in the half-wind -
half-water, as night fell upon the wood.
As the trees exhaled, they saw how to be ****;
how to retrace a moon from vague beginnings.
Tonight, it groans sideways across iron roofs
that seem to bend double, even as they hold their own shape.
Somewhere far off, the wind speaks the name,
that whistles bird-like, across the deep water.
And the unfathomable that rest, undisturbed,
murmur fluent lyrics to instinctive melodies,
which become lost, in the hour and the light.

If at the end we become strangers, one last time
and collapse in on ourselves like a dying star.
Try to remember, how the light from morning
once stretched out over a sky, to settle in on our crowns.
A fleeting city, a monument to ghosts and moments,
paused to anoint us.  It allowed us to be,
who we had dreamt we could be
when we used to play in front of a mirror.
I try to imagine if day never ended,
and had the light not burned itself out
could we have remained in a city of memories?
And yet, even as we return to our darkness
I am aware of the horizon surrounding everything,
which has not yet disappeared.

water at dawn
runs by fingertips
onto cold stone
as a robin intones
ripe throated
staccatos
that bounce
along walls
that have seen it all

should I
be happy
wasting days
plotting the gap
between taste
and ability
under giddy sun
that announces all
with just a few
spare syllables

I made a song
to enchant the night
like Scheherazade
striving to hold off
the encroachment
of decree
but I come apart
at the seams
snagged
on the narcissism
of nostalgia

those bright
waterfalls of dust
continue to gather
in fine heaps
by the curtain
and a brown river
smokes on
eddying
inscrutably
in the deep

we are
migratory animals
who never
really move
I won’t live
this day again
though I
live it again
a thousand times

Do I shake myself from sleep? Awake,
I see you there, or do I dream
of that swift peck swooping in
as you pack a sandwich, and shoo me out a door:
'Mustn't be late for school!'
The triteness of finality still frames you,
standing once more on the threshold
altogether, like something meant to last.

Memory, led by the hand,
that comes as the sun drifts
beyond a locked door
toward omen and eagle.

Wine dark seas urge
clear notes from a dream
far out past the lands
memory, a burning flame

still alight in mind,
as dark mists cloak
body became thought
memory, grains of sand.