light
wears the first breath
of word
for the poet
a moment unmeant
for the cleaving apart
smudges of carbon
blue and black cinder
stay our confusion –
of ashes
to hearth

in the want
for another –
some knowing unsaid
else silence
these blessings erase
with sorrows grown eager
turning us round –
forsaken for love
would hold us
always

where the next
is beginning –
the past grieving so
as the shutter
of spring –
a flight coming home
to resolve
what is missing
remembered somehow
as the taste of surrender
in words
long ago

. . .