Into the Winter Season

Snow fell, so many hours and days and months later,

and even though I last saw you on a day when heat
waves shimmered in the aftermath of a summer's downpour, 
you were also in the bitter cold and the white of the sky.
I remembered a hike on a hot August day and your hands
and your certainty and how the dream of the future was
full of promise, fleeting as it was. I thought of how innocently
we walked together without knowing what was ahead.
So fate dealt us a heavy blow, didn't it, with its terrible synchronicity 

of perfection, our little dreams held up to destiny's laughing
scorn and our hearts, so open to each other and mutually
offered as gifts, are once again ours alone, yours shielded by
the cement encasement of a tomb, mine worn upon my sleeve.
Revealed and exposed, our nakedness scared us, all our 
imperfections on display, our scars more like unhealed wounds 
than shiny silver threads in the tapestry of our unfolding.  Fear 
and history called us to retreat, we took sides, hurled stones, 
entirely convinced we had it all right.  Eons before, we had
held hands and flung ourselves forward, headlong, as one, 
hurtling into the wonder of the cosmos of serendipity.

Sometimes, when weather changes, I remember who

I used to be.  I recall starry midnights of my twenties, 

spring mornings as a young mother, dark autumn afternoons
when my world was falling apart. There are people who have come

and gone, those who have faded from my memory, 

whose names are tucked away deep inside my thinking, hidden 

in my neurons, invisible to the eye, yet trapped in some
enigmatic grey matter, vibrating there as substance without
incarnation.  I know that one day a signal will fire and 
the past shall explode into the present and there I will be, 
transported to another time and place.  But I am

speaking of others I have known, not you, those whose lives
rolled through me and mine through them. They, and I, 
were translucent stepping stones on one another's journey.

You are not yet among those transient ghosts, although you have

disappeared by choice.  Perhaps I am naive in this romantic
remembering; maybe all of this halcyon memory 
about you is merely a vapor of my imagination.  I do 
not blame you for fearing the very worst and flying away, 
given all you'd lived.  This is what I heard under your story: 
you were young and innocent, happy and alive, then devastated 
and mourning, asunder and in pain, then targeted 
and seduced, ignorant of the distorted intimacy taught to you 
through lust, unaware of the poison's lasting effect.  Suddenly, 
years later, a grown man, you stood tall on the hills of Umbria 
and I saw you there, in your element, those fields stretched out 
for miles, countless thousands of sunflowers, their golden petals 
reaching toward forever.  Forgive me, please; I thought you were 
my Ulysses coming home. 

Grace arrived with the falling leaves, and the winds carried our

brief enchantment away to transform it into myth.  I inhaled 
the cold November air and suddenly there you were 
and I was warmed by your imaginary presence, the shimmering 
memory of an empty promise, the treasure of that moment 
when you let down the drawbridge and told me to walk right in, 
your crooked grin, your lank frame leaning against 
a church pillar one lovely night. With what quiet trust I sank into 
you, your heartbeat strong and steady against me, daring 
to believe the love story we had started writing while an ocean lay 
between us.  The sounds of nighttime were a lullaby and I 
grew drowsy with the deepest peace and a wish to lie at your side, 
in your bed, asleep, safe and finally, where I had hoped was home.
Your broken heart seemed to be the softest pillow 
upon which to rest my weary head.  All these lifetimes later, 
while late autumn is giving way to winter, here I sit with thoughts
of you, apologizing for nothing I can change, aware of your
angry rejection.

Once I was a gypsy, spinning under a deep blue sky
sparkling with distant stars, my feet adorned with sand and jewels, 

hips weaving infinity, eyes flashing passion, fortunes

whispered as emerald secrets, but still I only cared for love.  I was
forever a prisoner to some fathomless longing deep within me. 
Held captive by that void, a gaping maw present at birth, I count
you now among the victims of that ancient yearning. Maybe you
will understand how I thought you were my lost beloved:  
something inside me opened and sang when first you appeared.  

How were we to know that stealthy fear lay below the surface 
of your welcome, and familiar torment would accompany your leaving.
Fate, elusive monarch of hadron colliders, spun us fast and quick
and threw us hard together, and tore us right apart.  Keeping with tradition, I sent missives, poorly disguised entreaties laced 
with bountiful condescension, desperate explanations, and 
self righteous accusations.  Still in the grip of ignorance, 
I pursued you with haughty judgment, and I have come 
to tell you I am sorry.  

One night soon, under a silver orb of coldest winter, 

I will stack the kindling high and ignite a furious fire. 

The flames will illuminate the clearing, and I will dance only
for you and for our abandoned epic tale.  Under the vast canopy of
December starlight, I will remember the joy I felt when first I saw 
your face and the tender way you smiled before you ever kissed 
my mouth.  I will remember the glad discovery of a kindred hunger 
and the feast that lay before us, a mirage. The fir trees and the pines 
will be watching, but shall never tell a soul, and the snow will keep 
on falling and I will keep on whirling, a dervish of a girl, a blur of color and light.