I Envy The Orchid For Choosing When To Perish To Go Dormant For An Eternity That Lasts As Long As It

I miss loving you Where did that feeling go? I keep searching Through my pockets, Checking under the bed, Did it blow out the window?

Or did it simply Get smaller, start to fade? Like snow on a sunny day, Maybe it just started Dissolving away.

I cannot make promises to you That I might meet you in old age In a time period I cannot predict I cannot promise you a long life Or a vow to always be beside you

It is a desire, a dull craving even To see the sun rise this morning And tomorrow and the next day If I had the ability, or the knowing I would give you security in facts

All that is certain to me currently Is that uncertainty is in our water It is in that river down below us It is in the tap that fills our glasses It is one of the few true comforts I can offer, darling, please don't cry

She asks me casually Why do I love you? And what sort of question is that?

I love you simply because I know no other way of being To not love you is not an option To not love you would be An emptiness my heart doesn't deserve

She asks again Why do I love you? Does she think I can find reasons?

I love you because I did once One time that is ever continuous One lifetime of love inside my body A body that is far from you still A body that holds me like I hold you

She asks once more Why do I love you? Did I not answer her question?

I love you because I want to My love for you is my greatest joy Without hope or fantasy or dreaming I love you because it is enriching I love you because it is necessary

It's in the sound of the crunch and The texture I feel in my shoes as The dead leaves crumble under my feet Breaking between my sole and the street

It's that darkest time of year again When I'm taken back to autumn After the colors have blown away And the world turns a numbing grey

I don't know how you held my love In your hands and just let it all go How you let me slip between your fingers And die face up beneath the snow

It's the howl of painfully naked trees I know them well, I cried with them And every year since I've cried again Because I don't know how to unfreeze

The church bell chimes Eleven and I count One, two, three, and on And then after the last The soft cooing of an owl Plays above the forest Echoing across the sky As if to outplay the bell To claim this simple land For itself as it sings Every one of us to sleep

I just want my cat to lie on my chest Smother my fears with his weight Trap me under his sleeping sprawl You can never move the sleeping cat

I want his body to cover my face I want to forget the world exists Cat fur and light snoring is all there is And purring, which can cure anything

The red-winged blackbird Clings to the cattail It perches on, Calling out in that Short, piercing chirp

They sway in the Gentle breeze together Like one entity

I wonder how the cattail Feels, if it likes Having talons Wrapped around its stem, To be joined in such a way.

Grief is a large pelican Diving into the water where I was swimming peacefully Scooping me up in its beak

It carries me up from my home This is just nature's way I succumb to the darkness of Drowning in someone's mouth

The enigmatic me, I am the phantom bird The sphinx-like you, who exists in shadow You are effervescent, elusive You are a past life, a future creation I, well I am unearthly, a singing phoenix I am a thousand voices reshaped in rebirth You, a face shifting behind the veil One and the same, many things, unknowable If I am somebody's songbird, calling the cat If I carve a place in the hollow of a hand If I am another's, still unclaimed, still mine Then I am yours, always yours Who am I whistling to in the night If not someone as nameless as I? In the space where mirage becomes breath Between these legends, you are me, I am you

An ember in my hand Is a small and safe delight It burns of course Palm scarred for life Leave your imprint on me, fire

But place it in the earth And it will tear its way through Scorch the ground and then The trees until there's nothing Left but a smoldering oblivion

As a lover of fire As someone made of flames For this destruction I have only this tearful apology Lost in the blackest smoke