just as remembered rivers
never end, i am the love that
henceforth
you can never really deny,
the lamp in your heart  that
henceforth
you can
never really switch off.

just as
dreams need no doctors,
laughter mimics the collapsing
gleam of dawn
when a dream of love
passes through your echoes

just as
an egret writes on water
and passersby hurry
over the ruins of our hearts,
just as those who taught me breath and meaning
bleed in the shadows of my poetry

just as
the inside of my heart holds a falling star
and what's written on paper is my bones
you will be my lifelong love.
there will always be ways
of explaining life

but no way to quench
this fire

sometimes i want to obliterate memory--
those declarations of love, racing heartbeats,
trembling moonlight, and inside it all,
white bones

in the echoes of joy, there is always
a future full of wind-blown rocks
and bleak sunsets with a dusky stain

where passions eventually lie quiet. i know all about
the ebb and flow of things, the dew becoming
crystal frost, the lone goose flying through
the pages full of history, lost to wind and snow

i know you never intended
the long, ignorant nights,
the bewildered days of disgrace
the felled forest of your dreams
the naked star fallen from the sky

i know you never meant to withdraw
into a primeval stillness
coming from the far side of death

the death of all
you once held dear