In the Hands of Angeline

All had gathered in your clearing

Through my window

I stare up over the broken pieces 

Casting the last small stones of cloudy aversions

Spiraling inward

Drowning the sounds of simplicity

 

Seducing night from its rain

Pushing the crest of the bottle’s neck 

Blood emptying from my bones down into lifeless streams 

Down into the Atlantic abyss and down into your last touch..

Now the passages of an old eastern clock with pounds of oil and brim-lit ships

And the fog of fisherman with their souls nestled in the winter claws are my only salvation

Drinking wine where I begin to ache from the noise of sea and the pain of my hobbled gaze 

Puddles of puddles to drink

The breeze of your smiling half light,

 

You were here with me once

Wandering in your strings and crosses

I shared in your shadows a cup enough of rain for the sea and us

In the end we all die

 believing we can bear 

But in this our hands like tiny petals fall to weight

 Nothing here can ever will this 

        and with its wilt must ever stay

 

The dim of it brightens the side of our spear as I

 watch the cadence from my filtering glass  

Out further.. the lingering darkness where the ground has

swelled past the groves; 

         I search through lifeless faces, to the tracks and torches that brought me here, 

   hard as the iron spit of the rail… 

   I listen to the train's throat 

A distant bend as it clears another mile

I listen to the steel grit moaning a name

Though I cannot see

 Their wheels screech to another lonely end

and you are here with me again

In the clearing where our bodies asked..

          Who are we to fly above it all..

Who were we to take our chains as litanies  

 

You were there once in the clearing

You were there when I began to see life as you truly are

When rain and death knelt their brow to share with me in the depth of their despair

When all else but time had burned

Where all and all returned,

Trembling in the hands of  Angeline

And the weary eyes of my

 melting pier

Here there was once a constellation

 Now only strands 

The remnants and

 a once brilliant star

In clarity

I live with you now

 Entombed in the haunting