A Love Poem to a Sage of Mine Own Age

Far below the folding sky,

among the trunks of two leafless trees once called the Heron's Legs,

I dedicate parts of the street

(shiny baubles, pigeon's feathers, iron bridges gliding over gutters)

to the heart that first coronated them

for my young mind, love-full with the sediment

of a sea – not of infinity –

of the deep, longing hours

spent lying (nearly) in bed

watchful for a voice to resound clear to me

beyond steely lights, above meandering clouds–

always superlative.

(I only speak of difference

when I have not the image

and I'd prefer a word).

I would bear you close to me here,

in the manacles of languid providence,

and watching the obsolescence of the new–

Oh, please pray for me in your most secular hour–

The draught of this land

wreaks unseen.

Nothing has ever been so ravished

as our sense of time, moving slow–

nothing has ever been so emasculated

as the silence between words–

men delight in their explosive power

like children who drop eggs from a great height–

I may only be motioning my own anxieties

(I always do

though I try to keep them hidden–

for you)