Still just hours away from flash-point:

21 August 2015

22

You Can Work Your Will

Long all-over lily layers line the pond’s deep wet green face.
When their blossoms open, watching from the shore, have we seen grace
together, or have we beheld the closing of an inland sea?
Leaves grow long and choke the source of water where the nearest tree

stands one bare inch above the line that used to be the highest tide’s.
We shall dream sweet dreams deep underwater past the line that hides
the secret we keep diving for. Forever’s in our sight and mask,
and still we have to slide down further everywhere. Just tell; don’t ask;

release my hands and let them work, then twine them fast, then wave us all
around, as if we’d no more need to hold ourselves above the wall
that ancient superstition sought to raise and keep above our heads;
watch it rise and watch it fall; it’s covered endless newlyweds;

it’s lent its lore to all our living, dreaming, fainting, needful minds;
and when its found its own again, such dreams will rise. Wild timeless finds
dance, tracking back, as if in pain; as if in doubt; as if—in—tears.
Wild love’s danced you out of time, and shown you where one soul appears

to know the central shining place toward the mirror’s middle eye
as everywhere about you I might lie alone, but never lie.
Child of honest after-midnight, take me back, for home’s long lost,
but sit beside me on the sand where seas will rise where tides are crossed.

Out there, maybe far away, see all so many green leaves dance.
Waves from oceans understand that leaves must bow to circumstance,
and eyes must feel the salt mist blow the dust of land where new tears flow—
Lilies laid across a lap that’s sailed across a pond—they know

an evening lets its eyelids flag and fail and give soft way to night.
Everyone I’ve ever known’s been met. A green wet graveyard’s light
shines well toward us like high waves right off a sea that’s seeing—High
imaginings that—You don’t have to live. You can go home and die.