To Sail with You in Time

for Emilie Gajsek

we lock arms and become companions
having waited out the rain
to walk through the night wood
back to your cottage

you and I are passive hearts
steadily assuming the destruction
of all that we love
only to take action in the dark
not knowing that we merely reflect
the bright panic of consumption

        the moon is the light
you and I take
slowly stepping down
the sodden hill

it is my adolescent wish to guide you
to safety
over the rain broken terrain

in my hand
a flashlight remains dark
carried along to cast definition
in the case of some terror rising from the tall black trees

while I hazard the night with you
and we laugh our way over the slipping mud
we are small and silly under the high whirling wind

and from the shadowy trees
we cannot locate a single star
as I tighten my grasp on your arm
and force you to gaze up at the sweep of the coal and smoke
of that north night sky
        the moon is the light
you and I note as we are able to catch a view of the lake below

there is no place to begin but here
lost at the end of some road
only to find ourselves knowing
that we have found ourselves here before

        now I think of you as my new moon
a constant satellite
reflecting
the light that I thought was lost

there is no more memory for me to forget
every word I ever said is gone
I can only think of what I have not thought yet
as the rising moon returns the light of the fallen sun

the story unfolding here
stops at the start of fable
and I ask those who are now talking
to sit quietly at the discussion table

while a world issues
from the collapse of another

while I am found
taking from the hand
no more
than that hand took before

while I think of you as my new moon
a silent arc of once lost light

while the sodden earth sings
and you guide me
to safety

while I recognize the dying in me
and the forgotten words of my poetry
that you so struggled to understand

while the writer who died in the year of my birth
wrote during the time of your sweet wooing
"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever."

while I stand at the doorway of your death
with words half spoken and thoughts unclear

I only know that I failed in my promise to sail with you
to the foreign shores
upon which I now stand
gazing skyward and searching
for you
my new moon

August 13 1991