You disappear again, December sun <br />turns light to ice, fracture <br />of frozen stars responsible for months <br />of snow. Now that you're gone it's winter: <br />I can sleep, but don't. Cold bright <br /> <br />guided me to you: save me <br />some fragment of its linger. Poured <br />over glacier meal's cracked <br />maps, I stumbled through mist's <br />occlusions: now recognize <br /> <br />the face never turned to me, myriad myths <br />of you. Of course there was a portal <br />you led through, underworld of <br />wind-twisted trees. The preoccupation <br />with endings breaks open, two equal <br /> <br />-ly irregular shreds of cloud: white sky falls <br />from the rent defining them. Who turns <br />in this version, fixes me to either side <br />of mourning? Your heliotrope gaze <br />turns and I am caught adjusting my sorrow, <br /> <br />among spilled waves and crashing <br />particles, breaking open the day <br />to see what it contains. (Look at me <br />now I'm losing you.) Light-footed <br />gods traverse the light between the living <br /> <br />and the too-loved dead like echoes <br />or reflections: the body breaks in two <br />but walks away. (I pissed my name, <br />Orpheus, with doubtful penmanship <br />into the white. I had to <br /> <br />scar it somehow, undo its clean efficiency. <br />The frost will fecundate another crop <br />of ghosts.) Cold bells <br />of breath second the snow, the winter <br />you became. (Wind again: there is <br /> <br />no sound. You must have a <br />winter's mind.) I walked out <br />of cold hell, mourned well <br />when you disappeared from view: <br />same voice, no face, rubbed clean <br /> <br />by renown. I need some music now.<br /><br />Reginald Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/solstice-as-demon-lover/
