I Miss You

(January 3, 2011)

It is the month of ravens, the season

of liquid light.  It has been a long year

for golden tigers, and I cannot bear

to be without you for another day.

My tracks freeze in their place, there is no more

getting away.  Even my shadow is

brittle.  In the great spruce behind our house,

three ravens squeak rusty nails out of iced

bark with their cawing, change positions as

they ladder up branch by branch, but the one,

I think female, is first to find the top.

Yesterday, after the snow came, the sun,

behind a wispy smudge of cloud, shimmered

dreamy and moonlike, and a lone eagle

wove its way across the steel wool sky like

the shuttle of a loom.  It is the month

of coal, of burning cold.  The charred raven

brings its gift of fire to all those who

freeze.  The crystal sunlight turns into ash.

I am left to ask, “What brings you to me

in the night?  Will the knit of need and knot

of time hold only when arms and legs are

woven tight?”  My fabric frays without you.

Here in the slant burn of the winter sun,

in the black and gray grit of frozen thaw,

I climb the stark tree of mind, limb by limb,

into the murky sky.  Each day away

from you, I ache in the hollow of my bones.

___________________________________

See the vidoe version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0odVZQSWwgM

I Know

In her poem the blue heron leans toward the sun,


poised in a frozen pond, legs caked in frost.


I ask, "Is this real?" She says, "How quickly


time lapses. We need to pay attention."


I know when lost in the long light, I too


can forget the freezing clutch of the wind.






The sun sets without warning. The cold steals in.


Like the heron I'm held by what I love,


trapped by how it changes without notice.


She says, "I am going up into the sun."


I long for her grace as wild as the wind


as she soars the fired sky of the dawn.






Too soon I'll lie flat as ice on this bed


of drool and dream. From my frigid demise


there is no release. I know, like the crane,


my final cry will crack like hollow bone,


unfurl like smoke into glare, and perhaps,


smudge the cold, white sheet of another poem.