lux

before my eyelids separate
i see you

an imprint
of your face
inked with golden fire

it is hard to shake it
like an afterimage
of the sun

anything i see afterword
is outshined
and it seems a weak, pale shadow

my days are framed
as i try and chart your passage
here and there

they start and end with waiting
for you to cross the shortest line
between infinity and I

my waking and dreaming
find you in my eye

alabaster,
gold
and rose

and the limitless blue of vast seas beyond measure

i call you up from my memory
by the force of lionging
and gather your likeness
out of motes drfiting
in a shaft of light

you speak to me in echoes
fractal transformations
in untold repetitions

octaves in consonance
older than time

all my days spent remembering
in fragments
what you told me long ago

without words
in the medium of numbers
scattered rings of particle coalescence

like the ridges of sand beneath the waves

and all the work of human scribes
is merely a cypher
mapping the trail of your scattered shards

as you break
and skid around every boundary
and fan out in ripples

all these years i have follwed you
without knowing

making verse
from the fevered patterns
of the search

at this moment
i have given up
trying to trace your tracks
with words
or tones
or numbers
with any kind of signs

i am leaving
this imprint
as a marker

i have lost your trail
your prints have been
trampled beneath my own

motionless
till my thoughts
slow
then still completely

then dream till dawn.


. . .

copyright Peter A. Watts 2011