Your eyes of smoke in the middle of daydream
ponder still to fly, to even beauty's comb,
starlight snuffed out of stars, for wish's womb,
and hair before shoulders wound and re-wound.
I have left your thoughts long ago; you no longer dream of me,
in the fields of sleep, I am alone. No longer the grassland
were as used to your sweet rain as I am. Wildly, I sought,
but bathed only in yearning still, the shallow after-images.
That I have rid the ambience of songs that recall to us
the futility of what seven lifespans may endure,
for the gratifying sweetness of love denied seven-fold,
I have gathered to hold. It dies once more, and mourns deep.
But feet walk and eyes open; they are made for such things,
as in the gratifying folding of skin, I find milder pain, as
clunky and meandering as a verse about dreams, wondering
how it even began or how it will end. Conundrum.
— A. P.