“Before you go”
Before you go,
I will tell you what was here.
First, and endless love.
Second, silent
and spoken communication.
Third, any possession worth working for.
Fourth, imagination and a song.
Now you can choose to stay,
or you can go.
“It is early”
Of course, it is early.
You will hear other voices
sing other songs.
You will choose one.
You will come to know
the depth of the shadows
in the grasses.
You will see friends
grow and wither,
and dreams and sorrows
slip away.
Will you forget these songs?
Will they vanish in the beauty
with which they cannot compete,
the white mountain, the red rose,
the resolute eyes of a lover?
Or will they remain,
and remind you of the glow
your eyes had once,
and the magic they inspired
in the heart of another?
“In an instant”
Easily,
in an instant,
you could have not been born.
You could have had nothing.
You could have lost
the sun, the sky,
the slow moon ascending,
and the harmony
and flicker of leaves.
You could have lost
the rain’s splash
exciting the soil,
the blue beyond,
and the light
and absence of light.
You could have lost everything.
And I could have lost the same,
never knowing the cure
for thirst in a world without you.
“A song”
I know you are threadbare and worn
with the weary strike of iron
ringing the notes in your name,
And even the tireless minstrel
is tired of his own insistence
on solitude’s graceless strain.
Yet it had been enough,
and the mournful sounds a song,
Had we but moved without motion
in motion through the dawn.
“Too many words”
Oh Lizzy,
too many words and too much motion
to describe the branch’s sway
and the afternoon of your eyes!
Buzz, hum, and flutter are slower words.
City whisper heard from the hills,
and voices’ splash crossing the canyon.
Seep in, stillness,
settle the swell of the sea!
Too many words, too much motion
to feel the feel of the earth,
its grass beneath the hooves,
its spray upon the cheek.
With so little wisdom,
with circles and struggles and haste,
how can I hope to catch the ripple
of your breath on the glass of my soul?
“The moon found you”
Caught in the discarded straw
on the floor of the loft,
the broken rays reached toward you.
Like timid fingers they touched lightly,
then relaxed embracing your ankles.
Slowly, like a child entering water,
you were immersed in the light.
It moved like a gentle river
illuminating your cool flesh,
it flowed to the eddy of your knees
and grew in two rich currents
to meet at the top of your thighs.
Pausing, rising and falling with your breath,
tender waves rolled to your neck,
caressing your forelegs and breast.
As the light reached your eyes
I feared it might wake you,
so I blocked it with my hoof
and let you go on sleeping.
“A lesson in beauty”
Because the flowers hide patiently
under the cool blanket of autumn,
because the spring comes quietly
with the sound of melting snow,
because the breeze touches softly
with the fresh fragrance of summer,
I will have to learn to see,
to listen and to feel,
if I am to find you.
“I cannot offer”
The hills do not know me
and the waves erase my name,
I cannot offer the gifts of the earth.
I cannot offer the broad mountain and wild rose,
the moody sky and its quarreling clouds.
My hooves are frightened,
they fall on the rocky path,
and they tear on the virgin thorns.
Because its waters do not call me,
I cannot offer the gifts of the earth.
But you sprang from the soil.
You awoke in the blue day
that echoed in the trees,
opened your arms, and embraced the dawn.
Your voice flew from branch to branch,
and your happy hooves played,
laughing with the stream.
The wind whispered secrets of the stone,
and the sun sketched your soul
with stretching shadows.
I cannot offer the earth,
so I wait the night in silence
to admire your midnight crown.
“With two hooves”
With two hooves and a full heart
I have fashioned a poem.
It was born of a fragrant branch
cut from the top of a white mountain.
With a delicate blade I shaped it,
refined its roughness,
I smoothed, sanded, and stroked it
until it had the softness of your snout.
With a dark varnish
I released the blood in its veins.
It was born as you were, it is yours.
I traveled the winds of salt,
where the waves ache
and the rivers meet and mix.
At a silver lake I listened.
I crossed the seasons,
and found in the fountains of spring
the voice that knows your name.
With earth on my hooves,
I bring this poem
to the silent place where you keep
the secrets of your heart.
“Your eyes”
The shades of sky
in the seasons
are not so numerous
as the shades of your eyes.
With dawn’s first glow
they opened,
extracting light
and drinking color,
singing,
with the play and splash
of the stream.
Hills, feathers, and branches
were the instruments
of their song,
and they went reading
the notes of the day,
reading its words,
(reading these words),
and casting their image
in the reflecting eyes
of another.
They continued,
sharing their illuminated
give and take,
until twilight released its rivers,
and your eyes,
like the tip of an alpine peak
caught the last sparks
of fleeting fire.
Through electric shadows
they carried their light,
until evening closed
and they opened anew,
stars,
in the night of your dreams.