Moon Over Monadnock

I tell myself not to look back
like a servant to the watch
I no longer wear—
the habit a ghost of the memory
of happiness.

But I know the moon is there,
hanging like a shadow over my shoulder--
rising over the single mountain on my horizon
and I can’t help but admire her yellow, aged beauty.

Even in the rear view,
after too many miles on this road,
she takes my breath away in a panic
at seeing her naked roundness
ascend the edge of the night.

I have begun to count the beads
on the strand of your soul
you share hungrily with me.
These prayers drift across the sky
just like the moon
and when I close my eyes to dream
you dissolve into my blood
to glitter and glow
from the inside out.

Tonight you will become the air inside
the bubbles under the surface of the water where I live
and remind me I am alive and the light
that fills the ocean of your cries
to gather me into your arms
and vanish into one body.

You have only to gaze at this August orb,
call my name into the gentle softness of this heat,
and I will arrive on a promise of patience—
slowly with the wisest ones who have anointed
me like a bride on the morning of her wedding.

The Hours After Midnight

The hours after midnight
I wander through the dark
doing nothing
but missing the empty spaces
between my fingers
and the feel of mystery
between the curve of my foot
and the promise of everything.

How is it possible to extract desire
from this exquisite blue of alone
in a bed not big enough for two?

And yet,
I fly so close to these flowers,
I can’t help but collect their pollen in my hair
and taste the sticky trembling on my breath.

All day I feel the hands of restlessness brush lightly
along the length of my arm
and where they land firmly on my hips
to steady my blurred vision.

And tomorrow the full moon rises
and lifts herself onto the canvas of the teacher
where she waits for the dialogue of the oldest lovers
and the careful instruction to begin.

Even the ocean cannot resist the tide on this shore
and the beautiful music she sings softly
into the ear of the one who insists
on opening his eyes at the first kiss.

What I would give for the morning
to spare me and to release the children of these ghosts
who have settled like August fog
under the shutters of my busy mind.