So Many Perceptions

So many perceptions

mistaken.

How can anything impermanent

be right or wrong?

Words like yours and mine,

better and worse,

what do they mean?

They are moths teased and sizzled

by flame.

When did you forget that you 

are the burning itself?

A flash of silent summer 

midnight lightning

is neither fact nor fiction.

The fat old fly
trapped all Winter between 

inner and outer windows.

Shreds of a used cocoon.
Burnish on an evening cloud.
Do we call this life or death?

Billions of points of view

float like dust in a golden ray

leading you back to the sun

inside your breath,

this thing-less light

reflected in every raindrop,

every tear.

And from the soft spot on your crown

a silken thread tethered

to the distant star 

of your otherness.

You could dissolve

this estrangement forever

just by being silent.

Now is the time to decide

whether you are the dust 

or the sunbeam.

This story of our love

needs no telling, friend.

The past tense vanishes

into a darker fire.

Fill up with the wonder

we must all breathe,

many moist lips on the verge

of a single kiss.

Gustave Klimpt, 'The Kiss,' detail