nearing your brief closure

I must wait

a few Days

before seeing

you – You are

too momentous.

But remember

it is idolatry,

not indifference.

                Emily Dickinson

moon,

nearing your brief closure

you have pulled a veil

over your face.  Are you afraid

of the dark?  Or is it not

dark from you to me—

rather only

me to you?

Yesterday, did you

see? the river was

bulging with its yesterday’s

rain—it moved by me

sometimes foam

at my feet

sometimes far below,

and the stationary

 things logged its hours:

the boulders, blowdowns, brittle

bridges flecking

under their cemented arches.

Nothing, ultimately, remains.

If I sit, a Siddhartha

under what bodhi this river

quenches—if I peck,

a lone crow, at random

ants on all that’s wet

or dry, if I

remember that years ago

this river was my sole

companion

while my marital vow dimmed

and dimmed

and quietly, completely,

diminished…

I can say that once I was afraid

of the dark.  Of what might come

up behind me

and ram its way inside,

create that sound

my lungs still

retreat to

raw

unprepared

 where bridges

and rivers

are unmapped, where I am

only a blur, one foot

in front

of the other endurance.

It’s been years.

And this is not the same

river.  And walking here

I know that what’s transitory

isn’t water or rotting

spruce, whose face

is a figurehead on a ship

that never embarks

(I was that ship, moon, once…)

And what endures is you.  You. 

Moon.  You, conceal

and reval

above all this impossible

letting go.

I was a fist.  And times now

I still tighten, a stub drawn

ready to my ribs.

But it’s when you are new

and when I need,

and rather

  draw deep from a river

or something water,

a faucet, some moss,

or a memory

of a stone that

if I’m crafty enough

can see it back so far

it will melt into my finally open

palm and pour all

back to you

while you wax new.