How can you call that love!

Do I remind myself, or counsel another?
In this dream,
do I call out to every conflicted lover
who shields her eyes from nature
in the name of constancy?
Or is this voice raised against my own fear?
Yet another possibility -
a war cry against all we are taught to hope for.

She appears in a saffron summer dress
eats grapes and green things
But I don’t see her
only the absence that is created
the white space serves to give the faintest impression of an outline
Fullness shrinks, and dissipates

I bring hope and possibility
with circles in the sand
She brings the anonymous tide
washing away all meaning there might be

Completely.
Uncomprimising.

Desire itself is left no scraps for sustenance.

I wrote you were different then
I could touch the sneakers
adore the furrowed brow and adolescent books
She wrote it was a selfish vision.

I am a moonlit cloud
my passage is silent
the tulips are closed
Inviting amber glow of the corner boutique
a sign hanging on the door:
“Will be back”
A trace of frost recedes as I watch it.

In my dreams I am tender
and she is accepting
Her hair is loose.
Her hands are warm.
Her eyes are soft.
Her words are simple.
Struggle to delay the collapse of harmony
a goodbye kiss on bare shoulder

I realize as much as you are emptiness in me
as well I am absent in your world.
Though I am there as you pass
it is just the glimmer of an idea
quickly abandoned.

Two inches, so far,
add a softness
to the ever-pockmarked Albany streets.
A traffic light changing over
may be admired for its perserverence
in increasing solitude.

Snip snip to
Tickle and tug to
Trim and pluck to
bring a little order to
my unkempt crown.
Her tiny beak makes a quilt of the thatch
with the tenderness of making a home.

Too absorbed in her work to notice me, watching
admiring, her unruffled industry.
Feathers are falling like the leaves. My feathers.
Dark needles of this knotted pine brush my cheek,
float down into the undergrowth, out of the sun.