Speak love,
my tongue is unbound,
my river finds its blue unfolding
close to your sleeping eyes.
I touch, break.
Too late, the cut is made and I am
rigid, unspoken by your breath.
Tonight, one star
hangs close to the horizon,
a stud in the flesh of the closing day.
Its roar lost, receding in the gap
between this life and eternity.
I watch.
Your skin sweats words -
meaningless, anxious utterings,
answered by the measured stroke
of my hand, soothing, settling,
telling only my longing
to understand.
I’ll speak
when the first light comes
if my tongue remembers.
Poems from the trees 