In a photograph
without a subject
you, standing
with your back
to my camera.

I long for a face,
your eyes, a soft smile,
or even just a pair of hands.

I remember us being
so lonely for each other,
and there on the shelf
a girl standing by herself.

Not just the empty cottage
dilapidated, all alone, my love,
you left three months ago
and the old house behind the dunes
now a photographic manipulation.

A wonder of the modern age,
complete with cuts and splices
where you used to sit, an empty
place in the bed, a gaping hole
somewhere above my navel.

There's a storm
rolling in
from the east
off of the sea,
salty rain on
my skin,
if you could only
taste me,
darling, take
and shake me
until you hear
the thunder
under the wind,
and we both see
the lightning
out on the horizon
lighting a fire
all through
the night hours,
until our tired eyes
ride out the tide,
and we wake
on the waves
of a new day.

Today I watched
a lump of rock
swallow the fire
of the sun
and tonight I saw
someone somewhere
toss a box
of diamonds high
into the sky
I swear
it's enough to make
a grown man cry.

What if love was like the sun
and the moon was the essence
of heartache, a darkness
passing by every now and then
like a coldness that makes us lonely
on a long Monday afternoon,
would it be forever or only, hopefully,
for just an hour or maybe two?

You carry your memories
shaped in sadness, and the glad
yellows of suns setting
into seas of blue thought.

The ache of the weight
of your life, the bareness
of fatigue, the soft depression
left by sorrow, a soul embossed
with a notary’s seal, the truth
that can be sworn then lost,
a kiss in front of a stranger.

Sad that you have forgotten
the what, or when, or where
of Neruda’s beauty of a sonnet.

Yet you know the dark
space between the shadow
and the soul, the slowing
of eyelids closing.

You who build hopeful temples
to possibility, mirrors of light
to warm yourself by the flame
of offering, a dance born in sweet
smoke, the incense of conciliation, supplication, the medication of desire.

Rest my friend, wherever you are
and don't forget to remember
when you get older and colder,
it is only the winter of a new world.

Tonight poets will find the words
to color their life and dip their pens
in wounds that aren’t even their own
and some will stare at the moon
seeing an empty plate, hungering
for something without a name
or a clock with no numbers knowing
time carries a dagger and a sword
for the hours that wound and nights
that cut throats, arrows that pierce
hearts fiercely until they lie still,
cold and bled out on a bed all alone.

When love comes to visit
she only stays a few days
at a time; her work in the city
is important she says, so
she brings her satchel of books

I wait at the crossroads
where the bus lets her off

Then we go to bed to dream
where she sings and hums
before morning comes

When she gets up
and pulls on her jeans
and goes out on the porch
it's so early you can see the moon
and the sun; I go to work
while she lays around
to read and do what she does

The days go so slow
and when I get home
she's baked some apples
and painted my bedroom blue

The next morning
I take her up the road
to the bus; we say so long

She never talks about her job,
so I leave her  alone.