The November Cantos
The November Cantos
I. You
set my soul to jumping in
the night; you propped my heart ajar
and shouted your name down
those long, high corridors.
I felt you rumble in my sternum - I felt
you echo in my brain.
I missed you.
I felt you throb atomic
in my bones
your fingers tightening
against the skin of my arm
felt hot phantom breath on my cheek
as I slept and tried not to sleep,
an insomniac holding
vigil,
with every pulse
beat your breath,
every action
a part of the pantomime
of missing you.
II. Such groans and sniffles accompanied
your leaving;
you should have heard - well, you
should have heard our treaties first, but
never mind -
and then we felt you in our bodies
and your voice whispered to us as
we looked at each other.
Your memory
curved the blankets that we left between us,
so we held each other across that chasm,
spoke, did not speak
of the strangeness
of being far from you
though you were alive.
III. Though you were alive I
read you like a book,
perused your history for a clue,
an interesting gem of a story, some key
to unlock you when
our love could not. I conversed with your family,
hoping that the helix, the language of our
consternation, could decode
anger and misery twined;
it could not.
And then I mined my own offering, my selfish past
into which you entered
at one time
or another -
there was nothing.
IV. So I took to seeing you
in a black bird's wing, a puddle - in the new
fallen snow the morning
we missed you. It made no more sense
the more I saw,
but it was better
after that green cell with your
laughter on the walls. I knew then
that I could love you
beyond our hurt.
V. You got farther away
during another cold night,
but now it's only distance,
miles and mountain. They'll send you back to us,
your gregarious self,
and I'll see you and smile more and more.
VI. The sky holds
the orange sun
in her belly; the trees reach up,
rasp the clouds with knobby arms;
water freezes and touches everything - in the street a mother
goes by with
her baby.
It continues like this:
cars hiss
schools close and open
children go back
and forth -
things grow and die
and life -
life stutters forward and
goes on
with you
with you
and with you.