When you ask me who I am
I must find words that will rise
like magical tattoos on your fingertips

If you should ponder the mystic nature
of my arrivals and departures
there is no sign board announcing my travel
but an evaporating neon flickering
with alien symbols

How shall I discuss my knowing with those
who question that the wind comes from the stars
and the stars shake down from a giant elm
in the corner of this milky meadow

These questions of life and death
are not buds waiting to blossom
their answers do not petal
or fill the air with new fragrance

They are the dark molt of each season
a forest of collisions
this against that
why against not

They are a string attached to itself
a loop, a noose, a mooring
one to snare, one to kill, one to spare

Ask me not of beginnings
or quests or achievements
but open my chest,
watch the river within this red flood
that pushes against the banks of becoming
cuts through the valley of indecision
creating me through its very erosion
unmaking me through the slow ardor of silt
depositing me
at the mouth of this ocean of us all

Then ask yourself these unaskable questions
dive into your own river
taste your own salt, undo your own becoming
join me in the sky of all those dangling poems
strung between us
on the line of this distant embrace

There is but one that shall always remain unwritten
within it resides the undescribed kiss
the unnamed caress
the secret of our mutual self

And it is not that such magic
doesn't deserve the finest phrases
or that eloquence cannot meet its measure
It's simply that loving you
has taught me the virtue of silence

the whispered endearment
greater than bullhorn pronouncement
requiring no priestly benediction
no familial dowry
no divine condescension

The product of real love
is as mysterious as the dew
and requires a full dark night to become
yet only minutes of light to disperse

So let us keep our red mystery for the night
our real love for the darkness
and protect the dew of our becoming together
against the evaporation of the light