Say You Remember
Is no more lasting than the silver foil
Of quarter moon, or the west wind’s toil
Upon the deep, among the darkening waves.
Say you remember.
Say you remember—candle that burned so bright,
Casting our shapes against the winding stair;
Casement thrown open, letting a rush of air
Prolong the surge from far within the night.
Say you remember.
Say you remember—morning, with gulls crying,
The yellow sand swept clean, and not a sign
That we came that way. No trace left behind
By the incoming waves. And the wind sighing.
Say you remember.
First published in The New Formalist (2006)
Gravestone
reaches out to me,
accepts my silence, knows
kinship with the snows
lately gathered here,
only to disappear—
ciphers written where,
intractable as air,
a touch still leaves a trace
of something unerased.
First published in Lucid Rhythms (2007)
Not in Dreams
where streams run dry,
Not the face etched in stone,
the broken sky.
Not again will you step toward me
with shattered grace,
Not anything, in that bright moment,
that takes up space.
Out of this universe, then,
and into another
Where drastic opposites
still come together.
Autumnal
No motion has she now, no force
—Wordsworth
No, merely a thought that disarms me.
Have you come at last, up from the river?
I came by a path that seemed lost forever.
I knew by your step, your way of kneeling—
You sense not at all, you have no feeling.
And your hand, that brushes away the leaves—
No more than a gathering wind in the trees.
But still your touch finds purchase within me—
Whatever your dream, that gesture is empty.
Those moments forsworn, that ecstasy brief?
I am but a stranger now, even to grief.
With sorrow outlasted, what draws you so near?
Words that give witness though no one can hear.
What do they mean? Does nothing remain?
Only the sound of the wind and the rain.
First published in Umbrella (2007)
Visitant
that never seems a moment still?
That moves in darkness like a hand
of many fingers taken chill?
What is it seeking when it flows
about my head, and seems to wrest
All motion from my heart, as though
I still had something to confess?
How can it be it knows my crime,
this troubled whistling in the air?
‘Tis true, I left her long behind,
but this is dark, and she was fair.
First published in The New Formalist (2006)
