Southern Star

I know you can't sleep because the demanding are
as strong against the aperture of your heart as you
are mine. Countless hours and days they pull to turn
your mind back to the way it was. I know this because

when I rolled as a clam upon the shore of your south
mountain leaking the soft valves of my muscle into
the foam, I saw you looking like a man lost in the middle
of a crowded room. My heart knew yours by the scars

that bloodied the same battlefield, and it hurts to see
you like this but know its how it is, for now. I have some-
thing to tell ­you, I haven't been sleeping either. But its
been different for me. See, I opened to that pressing

sand and said, I know you've been waiting, so come
in because I want to help you become more than just
the perceived eye irritant that you are; perhaps a 'tear
of the gods' or a 'dewdrop filled with moonlight finding

your way home to the inlet of my fleshy womb, mollusks
of nacre layering mother-of-pearl around your dry bones
until spherically solid and strong. I'll string you with mono-
filament so you won't fall apart or become lost because

living in love and loving all the things you're fighting against
became white smoke in my blue offering bowl. Maybe the
North wind will blow a warm season through the portal
of the southern mountains and you'll escape to follow

the call. Maybe you won't. But for now silent distance
is a champion for any semblance of future this lifetime
might stand rather than allow circumstance to utterly
divide us into some future life and birth. Again. The end

of hope showed you your heart was built for stretching into
the wind. I've seen your wings; one day you'll open them up.
For now I'll laugh and cry the rise and fall of rocky mountain
spines, forever keeping the light of your southern star in sight.
~