Qais surely must have been so loved in return that he is now know, in legend, as Majnoon, the possessed.

You dream of him tonight as you remember that country of rain, its dripping water,

like her unfurled tresses, slowly freeing you from the stone you had become.

You dream of him tonight as you are poised in a fever of the body, water vanished,

wind turning cold in the avenues, the principality of love withdrawn, eyes hollowed like begging bowls.

You wonder about the miracle that is being possessed. You hunger for it, hunger for love in return,

and a slow dispossession of the self, the way leaves are leaving trees here in New York.

[1] Red tide, tonight, brings with it rumors of water to the shore of this hotel bed.

Sea swells fill for absent conversations through this night. And I wonder whether words I write on them will reach her?

[2] Even though I might sleep tonight inside broken shells of my dreams, there is this endless thirst for Adrienne's liquid hands.

What did I, a stone face, know of heartbreak, until she put her head against my chest and wept farewell?

[3] Harvest moon tracks across the waves. Does it remember other vanished seas, I wonder, when it crosses Saharas?

And will I remember how it felt to beathe her air if I wake from under this blanket of covering tides?

Harverst Moon, Ponte Vedra, Florida