Feeding Time

This is for the person I will be in some future

who may not remember with all preciseness

the silken taste of snow on the naked tongue—

This song is not for carnival,

but every crescendo I hear is nothing

if not ice-slick rocks and you as conductor

surrounded and untouched by snow-crested waves.

The language of water is you

the ocean speaks with your voice

layered over the undeniable

answered in unwritten letters

delivered to your address.

In the years that offer intervals of separation

I dare domestication with an insurgent

—yes, do it.

I have expected, in moments of disorientation,

to find you at my shoulder, or were I caught:

a mirror would naturally reflect your returning gaze.

This view is not for voyeurism,

but every longing I imagine lives inside

a morning at the cold edge of memory,

desire laminated under ice and hard like hieroglyph.

This gift is not gathered even for you,

though I may summon the snarl

of the lake and how we, unslept,

fed time to its gaping mouth.

Waiting in my skin is insistence,

loud as birds in the last slice of night:

sun or solstice, this is the fulcrum.