rattling the bones from underneath
she speaks, and if
the world could shake itself away
from the mold, we know we’d
see a strange thing:

smoothbacked darkness picked out with light,
the core of eternity, the lasting impression
of non-being, the antithesis both
of chaos and order.

past the imagining of cold-death, of a dancing universe
toppled in the middle of the stage,
being is embraced with nothing, loving-close
attentive to the ends of the world, and much much farther.

the lady wears no veil here; the actor wears no mask,
the play is well-known, the stage has always been set,
the story is star-crossed, and hopeless
in pre-Pandora purity.

here’s the bronze pale dusk
where the descending star
strikes off sparks, chafing
the raw metal bones of Earth,
on the way to Styx, and the passage freely.
while we, supine a little while
and mad in the blindness of midnight,
rock back on our heels, the last gate
guarded with the sharp steel of dawn.

easier to lift the jar
when not in it;
just so, the city
is a heady wine
drunk from the inside-out
we see nothing but
our own inebriation!

not for me
the evening parting, the cooling of the ways
in which we bow and pick separate paths
as the sun departs too, all in its own way;
in midnight we meet, in the cold early morning love,
at dawn we part, break, and the road
is wet with only dew.

the road -
first i never saw it,
then i was born to it,
then i’d forgotten it, as
it ran me towards you
and an inevitable dawn.

cold morning, cold day,
cooked on the flame of evening
crisped, burnt night
flavoured with sand and age.
ashes and cinders cold, yet-
somewhere in the hearth,
an ember stirs the darkness warm
with both hands, we reach
for a taste.