When morning, you are nothing,
The sun too obvious in its intention
That your body should bear scars
Deeply marked by the shadow of the world.
Better when you are softened by gray.
Great beasts of weight and importance,
They must be so, as the prism only manages
To briefly break their form
Now and again, a sliver of silver
A diamond found and lost
Within the black of your eyes.
I stretch my splintered winter branches
Toward a perfect alabaster landscape,
Touch the dull lope of dunes courting your waist
And the deep chasm of your river red
Filled with songs that haunt me still.
Your island, your song.
But you are also the tide
And I move imperceptibly,
A coin reflected in your body,
Cast but impermanent,
Wavering at the wages of your motion.
Did you move when I whispered?
Did you rise and swell with me
As my own dark waters mixed
With your flawless ocean green?
Tell me but don’t.
I’m better just imagining.
Don’t speak of those things
We once were before
When we cradled the echo of
The black between stars,
We architects of our deconstruction;
Ashes we wear and in ashes we wake.
If the first light breaking severs the blackout
And what we have made.
At night I hold you,
Your permanence, elusive.
Alive and burning,
Pitched against the threat
Looming on our eastern shore.
You are full and I am taken
From beyond the words I wear,
Beyond these walls, apparent as armor.
At night I hold you
And trace your invisible lines
As you dance a gentle finger
Across the narrow of my spine.
I’ll promise you these things, forever and blue
As your wind rises up to meet me,
A shroud against the cold,
Your wind rising, your warmth;
And I am forever and forever yours.
GHOST FORMS 