My heart for you most recently returned on a chill breeze
passed among old buildings of a former place
with a smell of Winter in early Spring.
A frosty sun bouncing jewels off ***** glass,
spilling diamonds on groaning cars, made a path
I followed to the moment of you and I, forgotten
at the confluence of things we know
lacking you or me. The moment waited in the street
where light caught my eye a certain way,
where breeze tossed my hair a certain way
and bore a chill with the faint smell of Winter
in early Spring. To fall is to fly for a time
that narrowly misses the wind
and gets in the way of birds, but freezes them in flight
and stops the upward curl of smoke.
Our trajectory became a destination,
to know the exhilaration of flight in the abandon of a fall.
My heart for you could never walk
the measured steps of latter days come to ground
so softly without a sign of what transpired,
but it comes to me in painful falls that seem to glide
a chill breeze that smells of Winter in early Spring.

the morning cries of birds awakening
where they stood nothing to say all the dark hours
say we crossed the midnight sea cowering in ink wells
rejoicing bravely on the red sands a danger passed
a peril unseen as birds in dead of night
I did not leave you or cover from the moon
or keep my words and all that I am in dead black
all that I am rattling in a cage straining against bars
I gave you in the darkest hour
not the world singing when it needs no song
not the world when it sees taking flight
but when you trembled I whispered in your ear
stay with me
we are our wings
or did you not hear and did another voice
teach fear by night and rancor all the day
call you out with morning birds to play
when I found the tender passion of unsafe hours
abandoned where you left it in a sunbeam on the floor

Did you leave the footprints I found when I awoke?
I forgot the dream but coffee made me sad
at the table with the morning stars arousal of birds
in the hour I love was then I knew I had

dreamed. And I found discarded footprints awaiting
their departure for all must go. Retreating
seas return for every sign and if you touched me
while I slept it is soon as if it were not so.

Strange the proximity of sand to sea, the land
of footprints lying by its enemy and so my coffee
made me sad and I could not remember why
it must be every trace of you delivered to the deep.

I spoke to the sky today
a steel plate pressing me
I have not heard from her
something about the absence of sun
weighs too much
so I spoke to the sky today
I know all the reasons
the patterns and formations
and permutations
chaos theory
the science of highs and lows
explain to me
attraction to the sun
the way a leaf turns to it
by what will
she decides when she appears
I hugged my coat
by its pockets
I spoke to the sky today
and I told it to depart

the mind is not shelter
it is shadow and spotless light
a storm approaching
wind shaken rye
a mountain in the mist
a rolling sea at night
you do not rest in  my mind
you move through shadow and spotless light
the dark and distant vision
the intimate who breathes my breath
the body nearly touched
lost in flight
this I dare to see you
bare shadow and spotless light
the long sojourn in mystery
the crooked path
creatures of my mind
the blindness of its winter white

I can't play no saxophone
but I can hear it played.
Sometimes it's a lady sighin;
sometimes it's a workin man.
But when it is an orphan cryin
I wish I could hold that child
and play.

I can't hold that child
in these ***** hands of mine.
I can't stop his cryin.
I can hear it way down here
on the sidewalks of the streets he's a child of.
Why, Lord, can I hear that saxophone
but never play?

Tarry with me here.
Dangle by the pond
like fruit of vine near season's end.
No pain's too heavy to suspend
a while; no love so ripe to send
it down before the season's end.

When this time is gone,
I am but a road
with destinations picked by those
who use it. You are but a rose
beheld by them. This time will close
and we will go the way time goes.

Tarry with me here.
Drift beside the pond
like leaves afloat in Autumn air,
like birds, like things that share
the wind. No sorrow, pain, no care
can rise with them in Autumn air.

When this time is gone
I am but a house
to be resided in by those
who own it. You are but the bows
bedecking them. This time will close
and we will go the way time goes.