when i first came to know you,
i loved you to the exclusion of my own life.
now my own sadness is crowding me out--
i tried to give you all you needed:
a bed of words, the mirror of the moon,
a blanket of clean white clouds--
but you have grown more and more inward
and as i get further away from you
i see us both more clearly.

i thought our two souls would merge
into an immense creation,
not become the divided things they are,
small things
with an immense distance between them

i tried--i tried with all my heart
to give you every gift,
the softness of the spring morning,
the romantic sensitivity of the rose,
the vulnerability
of the apple-blossom so easily bruised,

the steady devotion of the light, and
the short time you didn't know how to use--
you wanted more or you wanted less,
you wanted sooner or you wanted later.
whatever you hoped,
you will not find yourself here
among the perennials in my garden.

the earth has abandoned me.
my life is the bird's flight
which begins and ends in solitary wings--
which begins and ends in
an arc through the air
from the bruised petals of the blossoms
to the bruised fruit of the tree