Yesterday I met a poet and her poems
She stands and fights, lives by her heart
A heart of gold, never cold, never old

I see it in her
A spirit untethered by all but the vast sky and blue sea and the seven colors of the rainbow upon her shoulders strong
She knows the sore heart of a falcon gyring above red desert dust
She knows the blues of red sunsets on a crisp starlit winter night
She knows the wordless mantras of dying stars shedding their last stardusts above the great barrier reef
Knows how to number them off like lambs to sleep

She has walked from the break of dawn when the skies are stained with fiery reds
Till the last light of dusk when stars powder the night sky like salt scattered onto a black tablecloth
From the the shadowy allies of Tripoli
(Where peeling graffitis of revolutions beckon from the cracks and crevices of old)
To the stunning waves of Bell Beach
(Where every slam of killer waves against the reef synchs on beat with her pounding heart)
From every lash of the wind upon the harsh highlands of Tibet
To home, where the heart is.

Counted every rise of the full moon
Atop the moonlit snow of Kilimanjaro's peak
A lone soul exhaling softly between the downbeats of the moon's sighs
Knowing everything, everything
Everything goes

And to this poet I give my wishes true
That until we meet again
May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind be always at your back

May you armor yourself with the emotions you bleed into words and the glasses of sorrow you get drunk on like art
Meld yourself into the art you paint
Turn every tear dredged from unassuaged moments of need into an artistic experiment called pain
So this world can hurt you
No more

Live through every second not just along
As though shrouded in a dream but very much alive
Shadows of people flicker across the stage we call life
Living their hearts on Cupid's lasso and necks in a tightening noose called time
In one's brief lifetime we can only bear witness to so many plays before we too
Fade away

But you, dear poet, are not a shadow
You're the black wind of the seven seas
You're the lone wolf who treks the seven billion unspoken corners of earth
Collecting lost tales from parchments yellowed with time and recounting them to winter constellations high above

May you leave no trace but your poems
So I can find you once again
Maybe not in this lifetime but in the end
We'd promise to meet in the far Milky Way