Let us look up tonight where the white trees surround us.
Let us face once again the spinning stars going dim,
going cold, to stretch a while beside your one window.
Many blue arms reach down the cedars and oaks.
Like coins, brief insects glitter and toss in the glow
of streetlamps lining the lane where nobody goes for a time.
In the cradle of a new father’s arms, can you hear them fall?
Once in a dream you swam in a blue dress dazzled with sun
through a garden of white flowers toward me. I wrote
your name in my tablet when I woke, knowing it like the
trace
of a habit handed back from the blood, knowing your face
like my own and your arms as I held you for the first time.
The star chamber swirls overhead like oceans of white hair
sparked by the wind or the tentative call of night birds
spinning their places through the tremulous dark and breeze.
Trucks groan miles distant on the highway, heading away.
You have traveled so far to be here, farther than they have,
and farther than I down the winding tunnel from when
time
was a speck brilliant with nothing but hope for us or
despair.
Soon we will sit back to rock a while longer through
the hungry night always within us. I will sing you your
name.
I will surround you with bright eyes of toys and soft
sheets. I will go quiet as this night when I go, as the light
of dead stars streams to your sky from a lifetime to come.
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