I'll never sleep with you

for why would I....


Why would I care to sleep
when I can spend
these quiet moments

alone
with you

gazing upon your night time beauty.

For in the moonlight
I have seen you
as no other
man can dare to claim

for here
you are more than daytime woman
more than mother lover friend
here
you are the carefree breeze
flowing softly over fields of lavender
where bare feet dance
and a young girl turns cartwheels
laughing at rain clouds

here you are the promise of summer
and the beauty of autumn
where hands weave daisies
and a young girl explodes in crimson and gold
laughing at falling leaves

Here you are the essence of memories
that paint or' the now with then
where lips first tasted kisses
and a young girl led me toward the future
laughing at my first blush

here you bear lines etched with poetry
and eyes that tell the many stories
of love of life the ups and downs we've shared
as our young boys now run and jump and play
laughing as you again turn cartwheels

and young mens heads.

Sable, the swallow rising
as it banks over the white conduits
of marrow in the body, rain
slashes through the honey locust,
along the long ellipse of its hunt
as savage dragonflies rise from stems
to cling, a deep sienna of doeskin tremors
over their sting, catkins,
an aftermath, melancholy to the skin
soaked in white calla,
its reticence assails
the sleeping orchards of the heart,
in its darkest sheaves,
to cleave apart the soft joining of lips
and silence me;

for eternity
is this moment,
and the light you give
cloaks me in a coat of flames,
the burnt locust of slaughter, taunt
the rubric of Christs hidden scriptures,
as I night,
the body, solely a vessel
of shadow, returning
through a field of windfall,
ripe with wasps,
echo you
in me,
a dream of a dream dream't,
in the dim recess of light

your lips close
like a sutra over mine,
a brutality of moments
ground out of thick pine,
as the fine agony
of cricket ballets rise
shivering, to stillness,
this silence is a lotus,
a blue psalm,
throttles the throat,
as a quorum of swallows
gather between the swathes
of sunlight and skewed shadows,
and lift as one body, subsumed
by our abandoned depths,

out of exile, you
have made me a homeland
of truant light and as I night,
lightning opens like scripture,
a black plea, poured over some sore refuge,
and so that I may never be restored,
cloak me in a coat of flames,
suffering an ecstasy of moments hardened in amber,
over the white conduits of marrow
in the savage body, writhe
a black throng of swallows,
assail the sleeping orchards of the heart,
in its darkest sheaves, to cleave
apart the soft joining of lips
and silence me....