I am staying up all night with a body tired from labor and a heart alive with quick remembrance.

And you are not to blame, you are but water and laughter Both of which somehow slipped into me.

Now in the cold, the stone heart slowly splits. I am trying to hold it together. What is the cure for all this?

Not you. Yet it must be you. Quick hands are required to pull out the thorns: the accidental brush of hands, glances.

It would have been better to be stabbed clean with a knife, one deep stain, one color. Now I am a foolish polka dotted cloth.

I pity myself and my wolf of desire, which wants to howl at the moon all night.

Does the moon ever answer?

Inside of me lies A desert, a thirst An echo of vanished forests.

The secret remains Unseen, a layer of rock Covers the waters.

Their flowing sound I have only heard Lately within.

Now there is work To do, for hands To break through the bones

Of brittle desire, the cage Which imprisons a nightingale Holding the green oasis of song.

In spite of wind over the meadow There is a kind of silence hidden In this repose of your body.

One side of me is hot and the other Cold, stone cold. Silence of warmth, smile of silence, which slowly becomes

Music, the one the side of heat, is you. Dropping behind the mute towers, on the side of cold, is the sun.

Soon evening will come on Fireflies' wing. Dark will seep Into the hours that you hold

(You will, won't you?) out for me In the lines of your palms. There we will fall into song.

Sing silence, you sing. Sing golden stalks of wheat, your hair sings Sing stars of my night, your eyes sing. Sing young dogwoods, your waist sings. Sing sharp skyscrapers of the city, your bones sing. Sing the echoing spaces in between, I too sing.

At 2004 Dogwood Festival