How long will darkness lay with you
I gently sweep through your hair
A forehead free of fever
Yet locked in battle, you sweat
I call no dirge to lips
Nor raise my hammer to forge
I gently sweep through your hair
My fingers lost and forlorn
Fairies dare not answer
Trolls turn their gaze with a grin
’tis the dance of death upon them
I gently sweep through your hair
Be strong and carry on
Cross the thresholds of a dozen more years
Dragging, dragging along this song
The whitetails and whippoorwills
Have their heart set on seeing thee pass through the door a hundred more
On your way to me, to me
On your way to me
Perk up your fingers in laying traps
The hares would hate to find you there
And not crossing the floor of another year
When the cold thumps your back
On the way in and on your front on the way out
The week grows thin, but your woman stout
Cry hurree, hurree, hurree
For the sun sets fast on the busy hands of a man that hefts through most of life’s plans
What to do but greet the grey day with the lemon of your smile
What to do, what to do
But greet the day
With the fingers bandaged through
The bass adds his line
To an alto kind of day
A choir forms in the lower ranks
Shredded I feel invited to corners of time where water will not steal the ink from my pedigree
Just send the bits of paper pulsing like lost jellyfish in so much bits of self
Echo for me the lost years in this hall
Blending through the shoulders hunches and absorbed
Faces searched and abandoned
Shuffle my hat deeper into my head lower with shrug frozen to my neck
I walk away
Centered in self
I find myself twisting
A worm in the fish’s mouth
A sidenote in someone else’s ending
Oh, shall the waves roll slowly by when all is tied and still
Abide the fawn and darting quail til fathoms shall run dry
Beneath my feet as I wait on a word or two from thee
Enticed by sunset moon sunrise and all the heavenly throng
Sing on
Sing on
My dancing fae
Sing on and nimbly sway
For on the morrow shall we meet
Rejoined at the noon day
Moored to a diamond laden lake
The moon asks her where she’s been
Lost in the tangles of time
She replies
The gardener comes to cut me down with his shears
Almost through the limb
I’ve been healing the spots chewed
That’s all
Everyday I climb a tree and howl for you
Greeted by the Dawn pale and mute
The drowning girl remembers how she almost drowned
Corners fold in until the only room left to move leaves spinning
I miss you in ways I cannot miss you on mountains we never climbed
with him still shines the possibility
Love in my darkest state
Deep in couch cushions blue velvet I found a movie ticket
Sliding my hand down the wall between the wet brick I hid my jar
Once when vacuuming a couch, a spider as big as my hand popped up surprised
And I screamed surprised
And the children screaming ran to me
Which is to say they ran towards the spider between them and me
So I screamed, No! and, Stay Back!
Only a crease of memory
There’s a door in my heart where the light pours through
Through the edges and cracks as I bump it closed on my way to you
In my memory dark in your chains and gray
Still as magical as we met that day
I demand what I always demand of you
To break the spell that bound me to you
But again you extend your hand
Say let’s dance as the world ends
But you sink down and sigh
Say let’s dance before I die
Shackles still
All is still
As I creep down the hall
Pull open the door in my heart til the light pours in
AbyKittiwake 