the studious wind
is leafing through the pages
of my life, and here you are,
sitting right here in the fourth chapter

as clouds and distant mountains
interface with the yellow edge of autumn
and your unassuming shadow slips
among reflections of the shedding trees

time is a picket fence
that only the wind, sheared by
withered branches, can get through
but deep inside, your image is incandescent

love that is consummated
only in a poem is a concubine of truth--
thus the bitter water of the briny sea
sometimes irrigates my heart

but my hopes always revive
in the rains of your affection
salvaging the wreckage

of my sunken dreams