03/03/2011

Winter has passed.
It is a season of things waiting
For a time that they can live again.
It is a season of survival
In the absence of light and warmth.
Now the spring begins,
Heralded by morning birds
And green shoots.

Yet winter remains.
Within me,
Here, I know
I am in the season of winter.
My life has had its hopeful springs,
Its blissful summers, its sighing autumns,
And they have passed into memory.

Shades have come and lived with me a while.
Shadows and silhouettes have carried my name away.
My name has been carried away, into my night.
Perhaps it is their day.

A boy breathed my name as if it were a word he knew well,
A word full of connotation and experience,
A word rich with meaning and significance.
I met this boy once, I spoke to him once, he seemed
Young, and content with what he had.
What he had is something I might envy
If I still could.

Some of these shadows have spoken of me in distant lands.
I have heard their reports, carried to me on the wings of a falcon.
I hear them as if hearing of some distant memory,
Some long-forgotten falsehood,
Some magnificent lie; not as if
They had spoken of me.

I could dissect my heart.
I could say thing like "this is my sorrow"
"This is my wrath"
"This is my contempt"
"This is my hope"
"This is my will"
I could do this, but I do not.

During winter, all things huddle;
They turn inward, they implode.
They survive off the warmth of their own beating flesh.
They await spring.