Once, I saw the place where you'd been.
A sign left there -
A proof that you'd passed by that day.
I knelt, by the side of a river running
To trace the mark
Your heavy foot had left there in the earth.

Evidence, then. You aren't a fairy tale.
You work, you play,
In a world so incomprehensible to my eye.
I thought I felt your eyes on me,
Shiver down my back,
From the far grove's shade across the clearing...

I've heard you howling from a stage in a pub -
A song for ghosts -
Across a moonlit field of faces unknown,
Miles and miles of prairie invisible echoing empty.
Your song is sung
Rather for your own hearing, to fill up your night.

My hand, pressed into the dust beside your mark,
So small and foreign...
I see beyond sight...you over there in your far world.
How I ever ache - to seek you, touch you, hear your call -
Friend in the grove - but
I cannot dream the necessity of your cunning silence.

Suspicion, born of years of my kind's stalking you,
Brings us to impasse
(hunters both love and yet hate that which won't be controlled).
Magnetic, you visited here - at times - on your own terms,
And stole soft again
Back into the shadow from whence you now watch me, safe.

So I stand, stretching to my full small height
And peer toward your stage,
Daring your eyes to cross the expanse to meet me here.
Dangerous, this challenge I'm sending, and selfish it is.
I know it is...
I know the risk you would take to cross in full view of all,

To struggle, and adjust years of your point of view
Just to touch me,
To join with this soul from the other side of reality -
Then move, out into the light, across the clearing grassy,
Across this room,
And before you got to me they'd cut you down - Am I right, Love?

And GOD - who has cursed me with a fighting heart and true -
Knows my intentions.
That I'll bleed to clear a safe path through this chaos, to you.
But Trust - which in truth can make us no real promise -
May elude Generosity,
Requiring, perhaps, that we both call the bluff

And create our world in between.