The Never-Never Mate

The Never-Never mate I've missed is this:
 
Grey fog soft swaddling rolling orchard hills,
 Yellow-brown apple overlooked
The Fall blessing field mice,
Wet orange leaves .
 
Salt foam sliding like a veil, lifted,
Falling, rising falling over rolling blue deep,
No horizon.

Heat shimmer dragonfly wing glinting,
Tilting in the wink of a golden, blue-eyed dog.
 
My Never-Was Mate
He is the coffee fleck of Showy Milkweed seed,
Borne cloudward over the valley
 On vanilla silkwing steed.
 
He is a  trusty anchor-rope,
Coiled in the stern,
Rough, safe fibers whiskers on my cheek,  
I curl sleeping dark and close,  
Chambered nautilus dreaming,
My mate encircles me,
I am waiting nose to knee,
Falling ever end-to-end
 in dreamtime spacewalk-tumbling
Under the rain-drummed tarpaulin
In the dinghy in the orchard in the cool Fall rain.
 
Late, late, why so late?  
Whose love, my mate?
Did I fail to drop a breadcrumb trail,
Leave a match in snow unburnt?
Did I not sweep the stone hearth,
I baked the crusty loaves,
Though bone-tired tired,
I churned the  butter pale.
 
Seeking, I consulted the minnows silver,
Strange school- darting, mercury sheets in the deeps,
Faithful I asked the moon to carry water for me.
Each gold bangle gift I dropped
Releasing vanities,
To watch slow sinking flashing turning tumbling,
Settling where I know they will always be,
 At rest in pillow-silk green silt.
 
Did I not shear and burn my nails and locks?
Seal and sell my bargaining- voice,
Wagering with no less Angel than Death
And his mate,
The Banshee Bitch of Regret
Passing over?
 
Does my Never Mate see me feed the hissing, scolding geese?
Tending the thick-thighed, black-eyed,
Insistent, inscrutable, buttin horned and cloven herd?
Bruised by their bleating, staring, shoving,
Their wet, wool-pungent funk?  
 
On my clay roof tiles mossy slick and cracked,
I set silver offerings,
To please the black winged raucous murder,
settling in a strutting whip.

I sang praise for sweet, hunting brown-furred twilight bats,
And dawn's rising blue-gold sparrows,
Blessing the brow of now.
 
Scented my skin, cleansed my sin,
I drew his steaming bath,
I read the map!  
I poured him ale and tea.
 
Did I drowse forget and fail
To hold a candle to his night?
Soup, crust, and wine drawing the thorn of day from my paw?
Seduced to nod by a soft hissing fire,
Forgetting,  that the windows call for light?
 
Did I leave the lighthouse untended,
My wick ragged, tallow spent?
Too weary to climb alone, buckets brimming oil,
To ascend again the dark spiral stair?
 
Where is the unforgivable in my works?
What did I fail to see through,
To leave me sole and one?
Did I not prick my finger spinning,
Spill my blood?

I would thread the needle and backstitch!
Never to Never to Never;
To my Never-Never home?  
To face and hold my Mate.