Sonnet I: The Gift

How shall I tell thee? As Edna St. Vincent Millay? Should we                
not rather count the moments than ways? The diving seconds                
that swoop as chimney sweeps into old ashes;  each hatchling,                
as a Lotus rising into a morning slowly dying?  For Love, you see,                
is not all; nor can be traded for a poetic word. Or, cummings, e.e.?                
It was Spring, after all, when we, mudlucious with possibilities,                
passed baking into the Solstice. Shall Summer burn us black;                
or, shall we as young wheat, survive Autumn's sickled harvest?                
Blake, then? Unceasing mental Armageddon building the holy                
land unto himself in England? Shall we walk golden pavement,                
eat of olive branch? What of Frost? Shall we alone capture and                
freeze the Universe in Tupungato that it remain this moment?                  
  Marvel its  solid element under the wind's guarded armament                  
  until bored? None can promise; Mon Ami. Least of all me.                
               
Shall I tell thee as Whitman? Shall we possess the patience of                
a spider upon a promontory vastness dictating webs we weave?                
Or, praying as Herbert for ancient relief, asking endless queries                
of poetry donned in Venus's livery and martyred origins? None                
can promise; Mon Ami. Least of all, me. Despite how I may                
dream my life is not mine to keep; nor is yours, as you yourself                
have mapped distance to death. For I know the fear others have                
of you; yet, I stayed. And I have not revealed half to another                
such as I have unveiled unto yourself. Yes; I think not to count                
the ways but this moment and all those behind that no promise                
of mine ever be broken unto thee, in that I have loved you in all                
the outstretched fingers of each sooted second shared betwixt us.                
  Would Shakespeare, as in Sonnet One Sixteen, surely not have writ                
  Of such unalterable ­moments had he penned a Sonnet One Fifty Six?                
               
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