Work goes on, regardless of all else. Here is an intermediary report:

23 December 2014

22

Will You? Will You Not?

Close as air, when it’s inside, is all the voice I hear. You cry
across the very narrow valley you and I still have to lie
on either side of just a little longer. Whilst your wails ring true,
the words of them, the way you chant—that visits me in nightmares. You
are death’s most dear, embodied outline, ghostly in a right loud way.
If I want to fall asleep alone again—I can’t. You stay
within an elbow’s ribcage—Who’s the bedmate who steals all the sheets?
On and on, a poet dons her mourning dress, a red sheep bleats,
a pair of braidless hands won’t cease to shake, and someone leans too low.
When she rises, taken from her rightful place to love’s wild glow
as if in such a wild man’s eyes he stared her back from heaven’s verge,
and she fell staggered back again, and rose, and then—as souls emerge
from fearful superstition into clear, benignant, streaming light,
she wakes within his arms again, and welcomes double—triple—sight.
Close as very air within the lungs that burst in this deep sea,
won’t you be the one to lay me down and let me die and be?

More updates probably coming soon!