A Backdrop

The backdrop is of a night with no stars
a night not quite as still as ice, yet
subdued like a surreptitious lover
in the not entirely black and not
entirely effective warmth of a cloak
who looks up at a shadow blending
in a not entirely lit window frame
with filmy yet darkened shades and
shivering, like the lover, in the sense
of a rumpled warmth gone and of
a sliver of moon turning the other way
in that half complicity of one
who concedes again not to look
at what has been seen one million
times before.

There is no closeness and yet
there is no distance in this night
simply detached of what I am
and of what you are, here, in this
half-glowing room, so completely still
and yet so totally vivid, that its pulse
and our breath are tingles upon
the conceivable skin of those
forms leaping up the walls. As if
they were challenging the night
to jump forth and dance, or then
to come and hush them, if it dares.

Your tenderness moulds a round
comfort upon my knees, around
my waist, and my contentment is
poised above your face, your hair
your closed eyelids, like a musical
transcription for fingertips about
to unfurl. Prelude, nocturne, maybe
prelude and nocturne and ballade
and, why not, sonata, all in a single
harmonic progression of accordant
geometries, of a not always symmetrical
yet ever synchronous etude.

And I suddenly wonder why
I’m writing about the night’s
detachment, or indeed about
backdrops of ambiguous imagery
to this space within a space and
this moment within a time that seems
to have stopped although it glides.

Could it be because in this room
within the night, I’m so consummately
immersed in being with you and in you
being with me, that it seems just right
to digress in and out of a perception
and about the conceptualization of
a dream that looks like life and
of a life that feels like dream -
with no closeness and yet no distance
at all between them. Like between
a backdrop of surreptitious half-darkness
and a vivid half-glow of leaping shadows
of breath and pulsing light.

© 2006 Alexandra* ~ OneLight*®