Sudden stillborn time erupts in snapdragon flame:
A sun-spate summer.
Onionskin eyes wide to a sky of kissing blue,
Of June berries and rain-sick wind.
Your eyes of coffee grounds
Breathe a world of glassy night –
Your Gabriel’s lips speak marvels to my ears.
Western fire reaches roots to the earth of night
And tranquility shadows us.
It gathers at the edges of your leaving
As the clouds roil you away.
See me not beneath the veil of brine, love,
But in late summer’s antique blossoms,
In the light-flooded trees, in the skirts of the matron sky.
When tarnished white at my window-pane blooms
To illuminate Night’s dewy footprints,
As if to reveal a silvery ballet –
Then, then do I wake to stars of shadow,
Moon of copper coin, emblem
Of an august summer’s faded rose.
