Lately I have marked the ten-year anniversary of my partner’s death. This came last night, after a long break. We shall see what follows:

30 April 2024

Still Beyond Telling

Clear through the midst of the storm as the air rose in columns then swiftly subsided in rain–

a whistle came shrieking. I heard it again and it broke half a heart that had healed wrong again.

I listened with all I had in me and when the wild keenings combined in my hearing insight,

their shards reassembled and showered their blessings on us and all round us. It’s raining tonight.

The needle kept stitching the thin sheets together. Whilst plying itself, without fiber nor hand,

the raindrops that stained the pale page gave their essence, and soon lines appeared that held meanings a planned

departure from deep cosmic space once made fecund with ominous portents and signs from afar–

the marks they were meaning to make as they flew through the eyes of the seamstresses we were and are.

One on each side of a frail bit of tissue, with nothing between us but what will hold song.

Look at me, leaves round a spring where the wind blows with echoes of storm and the raptures of wrong,

mournful measures that used us and then flew away in the merciless manner of petals stars shed.

Look at these, leaves round a sorrowful countenance born to give birth to what’s already dead.

Sometimes when the risings and fallings come fastest, a blur of wild words springs to mind–though words pale

as the flow renders everything round it so musical, muted forgetfulness mouths its sad tale–

till it happens again like the lightning the first time. Numb and then tingling, then pain too entire.

I’ve let it swallow whole lives just to taste it and now I am shining with vivid desire

for a silence the storm keeps in locked rooms so vast but so hidden, their whereabouts cry like a bird

with a rip in its side and it’s leaking and little red elements shimmer and soon I’ll have heard

what I came for again–but I won’t; I’ll have failed it again because sleep’s been a dear friend to me,

and I’ll drown in my bed before leaving it ever to walk through a night where you’ve long ceased to be.

The windows are open; the curtains are swaying; a few fallen leaves meet the dust on the floor

where no dancer will send them airborne in a circle till all they land softly elsewhere. And the door

is wide open as well, for there’s nothing inside that’s one hint of a secret; that secret’s been told

to its death, and its circling about in its coffin and still there’s no dancer; there’s only grave mold

and the storm that won’t end and the flow of the river of song through the bodies as well as the throats

of the ones who were called by the ghost that is poetry wandering between lightning flashes that floats

through an air that is shrieking as if it could never convey but in pain of its own the bird’s cry

that you knew you were leaving alone with a needle without any thread with its throat half bled dry–

before it was made to be woken alive under shadows of leaves where the rain dripped and fell

and you knew you were shining and I would admire you, but where were you headed? I still cannot tell

the beauty that rose up so strangely, so holy and perfect its fragrance grows keen and then cries–

a coldness in columns, a storm drenching lightning–a word of unbeing–a tissue of lies.