There would be many winters arriving
once to never return the same way, even with
the many wind-furled snowdrifts continually
re-sculpting into old familiar shapes.  
There would be many loves.
There would be many loves; there would be
only that one night. 
Sounds of lonesome birch cracking.
Ice crystals suspended in frozen
immovable air mimicking old longings
for spring’s lilacs and summer’s wild roses. 
There would be one autumn
I opened my eyes
to the dreamy star-shattered night. 
There would be many open fields
where snow fell late, as your declarations
of love.  If only we could have
separated loneliness from desire. 
There would be many loves;
they would have one voice. 
There would be many sunsets;
we never would see them. 
We would not be there together.
We would not be here together.
Through these many winters
never coming the same way twice. 
Those many sunsets
we were too foolish to share.
                        

Sudden and measured as an eclipse
forgetting begins: Then, like a bone ulu knife
slow, sharp light scrapes 
this room’s dark memories
desert ox-skull bare and your face
fades into the sun’s zenith
beneath which I am left
coated in a luster with no signifier,
no language to suggest
what breaks this whitest light
into so many loose irregular pearls
set echoing silent and contrapuntal
against my ceiling, linoleum, walls.
Eventually, we lose everyone this way.
Once, above tree line on Sugar Loaf
my Love rose upward on waxed wooden wings
into the sun’s halo disappearing from presence
into memory, into the nagging throb 
of a nearly forgotten word. 
Here, in his absence, I grope neural files
to decipher what we have made between us,
what it is, unspoken, synchronous,
that lingers over this grain of memory
trembling in my throat.
Beyond this room,
submerged in milky pools,
beyond the window’s surface,
beyond leaf-shadow, it is wind
catching at the thousand-tongued trees
rearranging all this light
that without their chatter
would otherwise swallow everything.
From quaking boughs of one white birch
a flock of rough-winged martins erupts
into a black V wedging open the sky.
How do I share any of this with him
so far away he no longer seems
real?  Small and cultured, a single word
drips from my tongue.
Though no one hears me
speak his name.