somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Dawn rose
Her golden hair lighting the sky
And she caressed the Earth
In her fiery finger tips
Painting color onto every
Tree and flower
Whose color had been bleached
By the Moon

All the glassy-eyed marionette puppets
Were brought back to life
Dancing in the light
Their eyes shone
From their mistress’ warm glow

The puppets kneeled before
The rising sun
Smiling and full of joy
A feeling so different
Than the cold fear the Moon brought

The Darkness

That was when Twilight, the setting sun
Dropped her marionettes
Left them strewn about carelessly
And the shimmering Moon came out of hiding

The Moon Lady smiled down sadly
At the lifeless figures
Littering the Earth
But she didn’t say anything
No
Instead she blew soft kisses
Into the unforgiving black space
Where they twinkled like diamonds

And she shed tears,
Which landed on the puppet’s faces
And clung to their eyelashes
Like silvery dew

Ah, but the marionettes didn’t appreciate
The twinkling lights in the sky
Nor the beautiful tears shed in sympathy for them

They just waited for Dawn to return
With her golden hair
And glowing finger tips

the same way people
breathe in

the first air of summer.