GIFT

 

I give my poems to other mouths,

the mouth of a torn cocoon,

hollow of a snake skin,

snipped umbilicus.

Trough of moonlight between dark waves

where the promiscuous wind is born.

Mouth of a sparrow,

but a species I have never seen

living in an olive tree on the edge 

of your desert.

It could be near Aleppo

where Rumi gathered bewildered listeners,

Muslim, Christian, Jew,

with no separation, because there was

no mind, only love.

I have not been there.

I give my poems to the mouths of roses

growing by the sea in a ruined abbey.

I have not been there.

I gently press my poems 

on the parted lips of twilight,

ambiguous curve, it could be a smile,

holding the final droplet of fire

in the silence between earth and stars.

Now you are gone, I do not ask where.

I pour this poem into our wound,

the spider of light in the shattered mirror

of our lost season, a well of emptiness.

Just breathe through 

your entangled solitude,

even if you cannot tell if it be 

Winter or Spring, Summer's end or Fall.

Let this poem be a kiss 

on the mouth of "ever"

in the frail brown body of the word

"ever-changing."

Painting by Bouguereau, Girl With A Pomegranate