Orange River

I’ve aged
       even in dreams.
But not you, my boundless soul
so alluring in your constancy,
     turning toward me
with the expression 
  of a college love 
I’d nearly forgotten,
             turning in orange light
   with one shoulder to the shadow 
of your back room.

In my sleep 
    the dead come to play 
with time.
        They live beyond their counted words 
and say fresh things meant to trouble me
back into your arms.

Old women wide as night 
      watch from the corners 
of my sheets.
            Were they to speak 
it would be the ocean 
       finding caves, feeling sand.
        How intimately 
              they know the earth;
on twilit smoky evenings
        they comb their hair 
with pine forests 
      and have no use for words
that merely tell 
a man 
         what the moon 
means.

But they are not you.

My body
        this stone bridge 
will crumble 
       when you 
     cross over 
                      to their gray wisdom.

From my collection, Twenty Poems to the Beloved
Published in Sky Island Journal, #5, Summer, 2018