A thousand songs are
hidden in the pilgrim
trees:

rivals for the best idea,

while sleep is the patron saint
of death: black yet bustling with
the platinum we are

and out of the speechless
ground and an erupting sky
there is a familiar home
in between:

a crimson hearth born and reborn
at the end of too many
brittle days.

It's what we thought was safe
that kills us in the end.

The morning is crowded with
plumes of hope-like mist;
immaculate comfort all around.

How I want the newness of you.
I long for every moment I never spent
with you.
I curse the memories that
were never born.

Outside my window
prongs of gray are shredding
my simple white
and stabbing the last
scraps of summer.

All that softness behind yesterday.

And some kind of ancient wings
are carrying you and the promise
of you and those thousand
songs into what was.

You fly through fields of blue
where no one walks and only
dreams dare to go.

Silent pulses are the last
notes before snow
and I repent of all I didn't
hear in the living hours.

The oaks believe me:
their branches are the
slowest beating wings
shaking off the shapes
of youth:
just lattice for the sky
to climb with passion

then forget.

In forgetting we are
true and we are free.
It's best to live in the
promise of our lord sleep,

or so I thought . . .

until there was you.

Patricia Joan Jones