Hands of Love

Hands of Love 

Although the hands of our love were at noon, death came.

I thought our blossom hour had only just begun.

Your empty pillow disasters my composure.

This loneliness for you is like an unseen wound.

I’m like a shipwrecked sailor without a compass;

My very skin cargoes memories of your touch.

Grief would be easy if I had a cut-glass heart.

When petals fall I know the flowers follow you.

I'm an elephant whose trunk feels for its mate's bones.
Time’s flame tried hard to burn our candle down to wax.

But nothing can change the prime colours of our love;

They pass straight through the misty pane of memory;

Nothing can unspeak the perfect tense of our time

When the stars stopped to see the look I gave to you.

I miss the rich rub of minds and the loving look.

In spring’s golden soil I’ll plant love’s heroic rose;

You would not want me to cancel the leaves of spring,

Or allow the lava of grief turn heart to stone.

Today a wonder-waltz of waving winter flowers,

And a coal-lustred blackbird pulping crab apples

With his bold beak filled me with star-set wonder;

I saw your face there as silent as a daydream;

The mirror of my ice-blue mind misted over;

Although every morning means a new farewell,

I sleep warm nights in the memory of your arms.

The tears I shed are silver for the grace of love.
The dust of your star vibrates in my unstill soul.
Across the oyster sky under a pearl-pale moon,

The sailing north wind blows banners of sleeplight snow;

Above this canopy shines a stream of bright stars;

I’ll trace the heavens with these stars to make a poem
Of grateful love that diamond-cuts our happy time.