You waterfall’d into love with her
on an island surrounded by sea.
You snow fell into love with her
at the foot of ranging mountains,
your heart purple like evening
shadow in alpine valley. These valleys
not choked with snow but ripe
with it. And the basket of your ribs
cradling a heart growing luminous
in love. She once tended a sail
puffed with love, it held for you.
That sail has gone slack and you are still
on an island, surrounded by sea.
She left you in muted light of early
southeast Alaskan Summer. Briefly,
you shared a small cabin, perched
on ocean’s edge, in a calm bay.
Your sea is one of lunar love,
never impatient in its persistence.
As sea swell follows moon, your eyes
followed small skiff on last shared evening,
as she made her way from you.
On far island, you watched helpless,
she struggled to tie boat to dock.
Your life has been woven
on a loom of fear. You have spun tight
concentric circles, tangled and knotted.
Intricate patterns of insecurity,
grief, anger.
A friend and neighbor soon joined her
on far dock, helping her securely tie small skiff to dock.
She disembarked, disappeared
into trees. Your body is full of knots, like trees
of old growth. She faded
into forest, you felt a loosening;
love’s wind no longer in her
sails, you felt it catch in your ribs. A knot
coming loose. Wind catching
on heart’s rock shattered shoreline.
Not a choking but a ripening. You tasted
the damp woolen ends of knots’s fray.
You would like to wish her good luck,
kind luck, clear mind and calm heart.
But what good does this do her?
Perhaps the best you can now do is practice
persistently at the steadfastness of ocean,
as you take the pain from your dissolution and use it
to untie knots.
Intertidal island grows quietly
larger, its mustard yellow seaweed mane
radiant, in thick light of gray day.
The ocean swells,
ripens in its love,
following the moon.
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