Night

Oh you are a singular shudder

Across damp maroon sky

Bled low with dying light running her

hennaed heels into lullaby marshlands

As unseen creatures lift their voices

Into raptured sound

There is no comfort here anymore

No belonging in your arms to find succor

We were once two trees growing into each other

With the tug of prophecy and the purity of magnolia

I still see it in others; gentling press of finger tips touching

Beyond romance, a friendship with delightful ovule

Curling around edges like perpetual honeymoon

That was so long ago now, that spoon of honey

Somehow without knowing, my heart grew old

Waiting for change without knowing

Sometimes things must break and be remade

Fashioned from alternate substance when clay

Becomes unwilling and looks away.

I held on even when it stopped making sense

Wanting what may never have existed

Anymore than promise-rings lost in earth, can blossom

Seeing the lovers tonight, fawn in delight

I know their brand of love; from fantasy

And it makes me wonder at what is real?

The value of letting go of certitude and fading

Fading into a dream, from which we rarely wake?

Do women ever fall that deeply, for that long

With other women? Or are they broken by

The legacies of shapes they have never fit?

Because I’ve been searching all of my life

And I still climb into bed alone, still prop my book

On the coverlet and stare out turquoise window

Where Danish roses let off their perfume like lovers

Rubbing soft delight against shifting curtain

As my hair leaches color and my bones sing of

Their perpetual gravity, I would wish to be reached

Through time, and held so tight I broke into seeds

Letting myself imagine, what it must be

To feel wanted, at any age, any turn in the road

How necessary such regard is, in a world of invisiblity

And endless scold… I keen without words like a wolf

Calls her cub home, to the surround of belonging

Listening to night muster her powers beyond

Blackening shadows rousing to violet tinged dance

Maybe if I’d I felt any sense of worth

If it hadn’t been beaten out by myself and others

Drumming histories like quick speared tattoos

I wouldn’t have ended up here, more solitary than when I started

Closing dreams like pressed flowers in unread books

But I won’t try the same way again… not with identical error

Sewn in my parachute, unpicking hand-stitched seams

It’s not fear, it’s a belief nothing changes

For people without love. Therefore when change

Comes, rounding the corner in her big full skirts

She must come willing, from the welcoming center

Of an open heart.