December is brutal art
crafted from gray sleep,
silver birth and
loss that turns to gold.

I've known passion that
wore my body like a
flaming robe,
that hunted
like a starving
ghost with claws and teeth.

The sky rolled down upon us,
perilous as trust, from
every hissing star we stole,
like Prometheus, from a
black and trembling night.

Love was glorious obliteration.

Love was a seething infinity
in a neutron—
crumbles of Time in each cell
and, of course,
never finished.

Now where
in my tiny winter
and sprays of white am I
supposed to fit these
yesterdays—
still drumming through me
like a procession—
when every day was a poem
and not always lovely,
but it was familiar
and it rhymed
well enough.

Allow me entrance,
glittering unknown,
the unwritten in me,
all-consuming gaze of freedom,
terrible, dismantling, honeyed
freedom,
adored and loathed angel
with all the best stories . . .

Without eyes, without feet,
I step into your howling,
empty air.

Upon the ruins
I build my true home.


Patricia Joan Jones