The loneliness and the shudder rise in my throat sometimes still.
Although I push them down into the ground like melt water,
some people are born under vicious stars.

November baby, your eyes the color of water holding light,
smelling of burning leaves in forests whose names neither
you nor I know. Now tell me, is this not a beautiful dream?

You are a king of the failing daylight, long shadows, the frozen ground,
turning our breath into crystals in the air that hang on your every word.
Two children of the winter, you its fearless rush and me, its limping end,

in like a lamb, March child: pale skinned and sparrow-hearted.
If there is a lion in me he is dead or hibernating under the ivory
vaults of my ribcage. But listen, inside a faint fluttering begins, a panic

or a voice rising timidly in song with the smoke from your fire.
The fabrics of our seasons weave together in this beautiful dream
where my moon is waxing always, rising in your frozen winter sky.