| The stars, and the moon, how do I see them? I don’t. I know they’re there, waiting in sisal-spun night. Like dragon sopranos, high and cold, beautiful and distant, Waiting like the beaches of Ista under Rukbat’s light. A rose, you say. Tell me how you see a rose. A rose is cool stem and thorns like an ancient memory, Sharp, and waiting to dig deeper under your skin. Is velvet petals, like a wine-rich Harper contralto set free. This firelizard, how can I tell what he looks like? Slender as a whisper, with hide soft as pounded, sunwarmed dust, Bones under the skin like polished oak branches, A slight, trilling cadence to his movements, brim-full of trust. Am I missing the countryside? No. I smell fresh-turned earth, Opulent as sisal brocade. Feel the fragile, cool life to the young grass, Hear the pounding, like syncopated dance-drums, That our runner’s hooves thrum. And the sky, icy-smooth as paned glass. Dancers! Surely I miss the dancers. I cannot. I can hear their bodhrans, Brash young trumpets, winged glissondos of their harps, pipes like liquid dawn, Feel their feet, thundering for eternity in endless rhythm like night and day Sense their thrill of elation in the wild, carefree cloak they’ve put on. I’ll be heartbroken not to see the Hatching, the Impressions! I beg to differ. I can hear the dry, brittle crack of shell, The broken falsettos of hungry dragonets, The pure joy as someone shouts a name, under a new lifemate’s spell. Light? Light is superfluous, A thing, immaterial, one cannot seize. I, who live in darkness, can be anywhere, Carried on the filaments of the crisp autumnal breeze. Do not pity me, nor, with my words, Grow poisonous jealousy, useless as a fallen stone, I can hear, smell, feel, taste—but so can you. You can simply do things I cannot, and be alone. |