9/16/12

On our way to the lighthouse island we imagined what our children would have whispered; their breath, the autumn when in circles they would sing rosy and all the others, the dimples like pressed flour, their teeth barely formed.

‘If only,’ he says, I say, ‘but of course.’

Shimmering in the distance like a depleted angel, no hope for those who live as we do, children ourselves, our women the towering, humble mountains- still is she distant.

We imagine our lives as the unfinished portraits of our youth, memories like thick crimson water filter through our distracted ways of never fully coming to any resolution- we rest in the valley of the belly, the redwood hips of the fallen timber.

I can see how she flickers from behind the falling rain.

It is indescribable the decisions we do not make but in turn are made for us, he turns and his weathered face looks like a tainted diamond- let us pursue her. The manger rocking like a hollow violin.

We imagine our women waiting, their subtle hymn carried upon the gust of a silent echoing earth, standing together, the voiceless song shared, the beloved. Has it been so long since last our sadness was touched?

We need at moments the cloud with another’s twilight irises; her breasts in the morning move like a gentle evening tide, her eyes close on the horizon of her untouched brow.

We imagine the past and it becomes the graveyard of our deceased dreams, bursting with the smoldering ash which falls from the present moment.

The lighthouse closes her eyes, the tainted diamond falling.