You and the night

The votive candles wake in dust.

I am a grove as a cusp of hands

Folded for you, a dying well too stubborn to rust.

Cradled in waiting is, this, my burdened love descending.

A distant shrill stops my eyes’ rippling pools with fires

Bound to cryptic minds of traveled lands

As a lament aspires.

Now it’s just you and the night.

Shadows cast over the carpets crush

Traces of steps laid, contoured in ever-breaking light.

There’s a room round the corner in open façade lending

A still beckoning struck in a hermetic piano.

Ghosts grow on the oak wood thick as thrush -

A dear beansidhe soprano.

Outside, some fattened groundhogs

Sleep under the grotto, a repose

Unknown to paths swallowed by lavender and hollowed logs

Over sacred ground. A tree with a birdhouse stands bending

Down to my humbled song. With you in my reach, I’m silent.

Before you, my words wilt as a rose

For not enough time is lent.

Never let my prayers rescind,

Nor linger in the moon’s shadowed loom.

Frosted willow branches tap to an impatient wind.

Still I watch the light, trapped in mirrored windows, ascending.

Gleefully lost in the pull of a labyrinth’s throng,

I tire of rain when orchids bloom.

I dream of you at the dawn.