Don’t say / that word

case we defame / or endanger

this moment / and the next

cresting night waves against recumbent shore

your arms molded from sand rise and fall

to my perpetuate weave

and we are

like flowers awaiting sufficient light

to open fully

a miracle each time the pallet of

senses born over with each song

held in my chest like women who wet their lips with the sore

chaff of flax before threading it into life

we make our reality

each elbow gracing air with untrained response

ballerinas finding satin undercoat

beneath dance

if leaves covered us, they’d say

Fall never ran out of color

your diminishing form as you lean away

gasping for air and back again into

perfect vision

there are only circles, nothing is

straight lined nor willing to beg for its supper

we two have earned our share of peace

many years of violence

the thrum and rub of pain is an ever

present crystal, hung against day

to pirouette prisms

a kaleidoscope of far away places

I’d have lived with you if we’d met the day

we both realized that ache lying

just one layer beneath our feathered skin

for you are

this enchanted place within me

a mirror of sea water washing over

the hardness I tried to place in armor

in lieu of a heart

your beneficence and the

arch of your neck bent in sleep

a field mouse of russet and dream

I would gather everything holy

pour the past down trilling drain

vanish with you into wings of night

two stars indivisible, our energy tracing

electric center of the other

this is dying and this is living

neither of us can mouth the enchantment

no longer necessary to verbalize motion

as birds gather their passage to dusk

swooping like dancers ushered from stage

and after everyone is gone

our love shall endure

a hidden thing

blazing brightly

in memoriam