i thought i understood the water,
the silver whispers of stream,
dying the way sadness sighs  
like a star.

the water didn't bring me to
you or you to me.

you were not the shimmer of a
fish.

you were the light reflecting,
bold splashes of colour
on a bold canvas. you

were night when i could
hardly bear the night and you
fell through me

like twilight bringing black
marble moons and watery ghosts.

i thought i understood the water.
i thought the stars painted your
reflection on my lips,

but the silver whispers were not
sad they were happy and
i wondered how i ever
found them sad.

loving you is like waiting for the spring,
the love that winds around my fingers

a stream that will fill with the most beautiful light.
when you open your eyes to my kisses,

i fill with the summer and the bright stars,
so chill with loneliness, leave.

i forget that the moon hangs like a
silver leaf in a sky of swallow's song,

while the rose that winter stole,
that died in my lovelorn arms,

left like the impressionist the water loved,
until all i could see was the dreams

of the water, and all i could feel was
the sleeping of the dark.

you grew out of the tangling black,
those carefree tides that lead to the moon.

the stars i thought were silver knots
would not unwind, danced on the horizon,

softened like the white mist that gathered
the sky and the dark rose of your eyes.

you filled with the quiet of the hills
and i watched as your ghost

started to tell me goodbye, that
ghost whose seas were frozen in the night,

the ghost i loved, and everything that
was fire in me carved the words into

the night's magnolia net and the words
were; " i don't want you to go".

there is nothing of you in this late hour,
i have no voice to wrap you in tenderness,
and i wait for your arrival like a starless sky,
empty of light, the ocean's forgetful voyage,
the sinking wave coaxed to grow out of the dark.
the trees are motionless, branches fall silent in the night,
like ghosts against the sky. i am empty of light,
drawn out of memories and blue air,
a crystal that breaks, bound to the wide earth
and the white dust of immeasurable hills. i think i am
still, small as a bird, and i know that i long for you,
that the hunger never leaves me for long, colouring
dry paper with the gleam of a harbour-like moon.

the light, the faint curtain that draws across day,
far from night's shadows, creature of fire,

revolves, drops white nets into the sea-earth,
where ice and the aching frost cry out

and the soil hardens with its harsh, freezing edge.

we are deaf and blind, numb of limb
like the thin trees and the specter-sky,

blue and forlorn, dreaming our winter dreams...

and through the cold walls i can hardly draw
a smile, sad as a silver leaf the autumn forgot.

it is you who lifts me from the ground, somehow,
like an april shoot seeking the sun, somehow,

my bones as frail as a bird and yet
when the air stirs my blood and i stare into

the amber notes of the wind, the unforgiving land
buckles and breaks and i return to the

kernel of your heart and even the icy
lakes and the weighty forest you loved

under your skin that the light waits to
warm, forget their cold death, breathe

like summer returning to a distant shore.

silence moored like a boat in the harbour,
and you flew against the horizon like a bird  

until my mouth was the night with its hungry stars
and you were the sea wind.

you were the night flowering, a ripple on
the surface of the water, the dreams of the ocean...

your eyes told me that history is made of a
a thousand bleeding wounds, your lips that

kisses are petals falling from a rose
and that we wait like old moons for night

to melt on the shore and set us free, we wait,
unquestionably free, for her gathering of

iris and blue bird, for her beautiful
and melancholy song.

the land was a slumbering bird that had not yet opened
its eyes. the morning roared like a thunder

cloud and i gazed at the sky with her cornflower blues
and orchestral flutes, her dark bones whitening

in the yellow-threaded light. silence wrapped me like
a shawl, and love settled on my shoulders like

a bird. it was too early for the swallow to return
with its spring-tinted wings, the winter settled

in the nooks and crannies of the earth, sweet
as your mouth, crisp and cold as the ashen north.

and while you lay beside me, warm, nocturnal
and dreaming of the sea, i kissed your lips

and told you to hush, not because you had spoken but
because night had been so gentle to you that i

wanted to keep you wrapped in her star-scented arms.

my love, you are neither the morning
with her bright unwinding hills

or the night, with her nets of silver stars,
you are not the sea whispering.

you are hidden from the world, an alpine
rose that nobody sees.

you flower like the sky makes its way
out of the dark, her archipelagos  

thrown to the wind, there to discover
like a frost that whitens the earth and

leaves its footprints in the leaves.

you are neither the moon, my love,
that waits at your feet

nor the sun that burns like the
summer with her mute fire. you

are none of these things and yet all  
these things carry me to you,

like a drifting cloud longing
for the waters of the night.

the wind has something of your wild song,
whispers in a voice i knew long ago.

there is nothing here accept the empty wind,
nothing of you and me,

i could paint the silence with the moon,
kiss your mouth, touch your hair....

but we are forgotten like this song
of the wind, and in the emptiness

i can hear the faltering wave
fall against the belly of the sand

running like the white clouds
race through the sky,

where the stars fall like old ruins,
this ghost dance of stars, these crashing,

crashing waves. where is the freedom
of the falling water?

not in the breath of the earth,
not in the silvering of the sea.

we seek the ocean in the palm of our hands,
breath is the frailties of a winter sky,

the stars are reflections in a mirror of bone.

we are carried by the wind into strange avenues
where we fall like leaves, dance into the indigos

of the washed out sky, haunt the dimming light like night
blossoms and dies, her rivers burning like fire.

we awaken in the eastern
sky washing slumber from our eyes, yawning

and day drops her heavy nets into the waters
of the sun and drowns out the voice of the dark.

flowers settle in the morning, capturing
the silence of the hills in petals of water and light,

and we drink passion and ink, we drink the colours
of our emotions and walk without hesitation towards the light.