AIR SPIRITS

and other ephemera

ALEXANDER SEVDA HESS

(fall 2013 - spring 2014)

Air Spirits and Other Ephemera and all work herein contained is a copyright of

Alexander Hess, 2014.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing from Alexander Hess, or as expressly permitted by law. Enquiries concerning permission and reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to Alexander Hess at walexanderjhess@gmail.com.

CONTENTS
REFRAINS
Breast clouds 2 I opened the garden gate 3 The sun-rose wilting organge 4 From imagination water and 5 On the heels ofsummer heat 6 Mother-tone, the harp engraved 7 I am one foot on each shore 8 I weighed the silver 9

ORPHAN POEMS

TURKISH IDIOMS

Ruhum daralyor 12 Uykumu benden kartmsn 13 Gnlm seher yeli eker 14 Gzm nazl baklar srmt 15 Benim sadk yarim kara topraktr 16 kmayan candan gayret kesilmez 17 Yarim gelmez oldu niye 18

Viejuco 31 A heron 32 Untitled 33 Three haiku 34 Air spirits 35 On heaven 36 Icicles 37 Air spirits II 38 An aphorism 39 Snowfall 40 Birdwing noises 41 Rain / Debt 42 Child in the garden 43 Cloisters 44

AFTERTHOUGHTS I
iiv 47 vviii 48 ixxii 49 xiiixv 50 xvixviii 51 xixxxi 52 xxiixxiv 53 xxvxxvii 54 xxixxxxi 55 xxxiixxxiv 56 xxxvxxxvii 57 xxxviiixl 58

DESIRES

Yolculuk 20 The voices ofmy heaven 21 The ninth wave 22 Adrasteia 23 Doubt 24 Farewell for January 25 Evening fever-dream 26 In the river's mouth 27 Agony in the garden 28 The thurifer 29

I. REFRAINS

Breast clouds

I. Her arms open, full clouds, (purple violet culling of old petals, metal golden at her mouth) searing, charming, she burns her divine myrrh Her arms open, full clouds, and ageless rain comes pouring: water revels in white omens of old drought, tearing mourning heaven for a prayer. II. When there is rain in August: water arcing silver, an aura of respite, of autumn skin (so flickers waving grain over sky upturned with ease by the deluge and by wear, by the sighing of Amen) When there is rain in August, a clouds weeping laughter augurs last flowers for summer, the chagrin of denuded treesthe bridal train for Persephone; wishes live in pomegranate seeds, arils of garnet run sour again. (04/01/2014)

I opened the garden gate

I opened the garden gate and fell into paradise, sated desire like an arrow ardent in the lungs, wisteria in the veins, and ocean carving cathedrals from linden eyes I opened the garden gate: eyes wild, lips tight, pressed weight of ten thousand birds hearkening the bend of willow (gloria in excelsis) , the rain's frozen steeples in the boreal sky. (01/05/2014)

The sun-rose wilting orange

The sun-rose wilting orange, a yellow wine spilled, strident singe in the throat of heaven, gilt and ornate as memory goes for lovers in rain, running scarlet as an allelujah The sun-rose wilting orange, heaven softens, fluxes, tinges silver in window glass spilt in mirrors down the side of stone; as oriental sky hums aubades to the forsythia. (05/01/2014)

From imagination water and

From imagination water and calligraphy of footprints, sand between the toes: the daughter of the moon and trepidation of the tides against the ocean come From imagination water and she ripples, wavers, she withstands the advances subtle: the altar, the monstrance, the adoration, of her laid-bare heart in garnet plum From imagination water and the scripture of the silver hands of tides against her collarbones: the shiver, the elation of the sea, the gravity of wave and form. (12/01/2014)

On the heels ofsummer heat

On the heels of summer heat lost through the walls, the fleet of passing ghost feet flutter like eyelids and lungs in love (we may well tremble as we kneel with our rings and bedposts, ideas wandering, water from the desert drawn) On the heels of summer heat my love hereto makes her retreat; upon autumn's mercy seat, embers, the quavering wings of a dove cradled with two hands, in warmth annealed; she radiates, as Rheas open arms alight with dawn. (15/01/2013)

Mother-tone, the harp engraved

Mother-tone, the harp engraved in muffled-beating heart, the daze of rustling swirling blood, the lark obscured behind the lungs; aria of nascent waves, sooner stone will speak than this musician of silence Mother-tone, the harp engraved in time and seawater, the red gaze of the womb falling sharp and then in turbid euphoria upon her curving rosewood bones, arcing bridges to some foreign shore (Stare into the mist, the river: from confusion waves suffuse again; if these rhythms waver to our sight, in truth the Universe rhymes with the Mind.) (17/01/2014)

I am one foot on each shore

I am one foot on each shore of this stream, anemic with drought, a mercurial silver ream of thread spun by the August light, an ornamental seam between parchment earth, day and silent night. I am one foot on each shore, the tide-pools of my lovers heart, and the striving, the yearning arc of her spinewhile water desires to flood with doubt our old designs, dissembling love with brine, with dark. (24/01/2014)

I weighed the silver

I weighed the silver shed gently from reflections on the streams surface, and pressed it through my liver to wrest the most impure affections from its jittering, nervous and playful glimmer; of such careless flirtations, I made my purchase I weighed the silver and tasted its inflections, held the amorphous daughter of autumns image against the river projected; but River is not formless, and no fool sinner can rob her of perfection: silver to the waves must always regress. (14/02/2014)

When she first wrought Eden from my breast

When she first wrought Eden from my breast, it was a blur of wonder, restless, a maze of confused birdsong, bloodied with the shock of birth; when from her ardor I coalesced, wide-eyed with awe of her and estrous, a garden sung slurred and long, I was covered with black earth When she first wrought Eden from my breast, she waded through my swirling mires, blessed each meter of my terrain with her reflection, reclaimed the shards of peace, pieces dispossessed from my mirror-pool and, divesting, so woke mysteries of name for Rose, and for Lilies flame. (17/03/2014)

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II. TURKISH IDIOMS

Ruhum daralyor

My soul narrows down, the first breath of winter air shaken from the herons wings, a migrating crow The song of the nightingale, the honey, the lyre that serenades the rose, yet whose love laments her thorns, I have long sung as my own How fortunate, my love, is this flight? How fortunate is this trancemy wings tracing circles in the air, days blurred along sunsets and nights by incensethis hypnosis? And how the hills know my heart my aubade sung by gold-scarlet dawn, my love letters inscribed on red earth there is beauty in longing. The rose blossoms young, her petals white with prayers for rain, offerings for spring my soul narrows down. (09/10/2013)

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Ukumu benden kartmsn

You have let my sleep escape me, like the songbird from his cage, like the sycamore from autumn, like the fig from ice, and ice from breath of spring; You have let my sleep escape me, in love like constellations, in these sighs, in susurration, the ardor of latent dreams, fluttering eyes; The siren star, the Venus rose, draws passion from my window in lace curtains, gauze, candlelight, on wings of amber smoke, flies my groundless soul. (11/11/2013)

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Gnlm seher yeli eker

My heart draws in the morning wind, and so are filled these hollow veins with the song of waking birds, with the ghosts of fallen leaves, with sunrise, and with breeze tinged yellow with the dust of red earth October lush wells in my lungs: am I reverie or dream, or am I the sown, harvested grain? The red and brunette grape is pressed beneath Novembers aimless feet; autumn makes a wine of leaves, a honey of rose and rain. Like the sway of linden limbs she comes calling me, so again my heart draws in the morning wind: am I sinner, am I soil, and is she a moon never to wane? (17/11/2013)

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Gzm nazl baklarn srmt

My eye has bitten the coy glances of indian summer, of auburn sheaves of wheat, the cloudless amber break of day, the olive of her skin, the oleander sweetness of sigh; nectar promises of slumber on her breath, and candor on her breast: the earth without her seasons, bearing sunrises heedless of the sky. Am I the sculptor, tiller of her soil, or am I the almond of her smile? Ardor furrowsfrom her laugh-lines, from her every flower, the honey makes the bee. Am I servant, am I slave to beauty, or am I grain thrown into her breeze? Is she to winnow me, to bear the chaff from my harvest wheat dust through the heavens' sieve? (19/11/2013)

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Benim sadk yarim kara topraktr

The dark earth is my most faithful love, the cicada in her undone braids singing my name, her spring running infinitea well of patience. She has wrought her ghost upon my face, a kohl about these eyes that tastes of harvests, of promises for spring, and the mourning of the willow. She has made a hearth beneath my nails, vanishingmemory and stain and the slow-breathing sweetness of dust who respires into my past flames. Cihanmhe said, his universe,
his heavenly bodies, his stars. But my veins held more than galaxies, swirling dust to be ignited, and he faulted the wisdom ofGod all wishing-stars will fall to Earth . Topram I sigh through honeyed loam

at my mouth; curving rosewood bones my feet form lattices for ivy; love is never oleander, love has no design, love is a bed of shallow grass and starlit sky. (27/12/2013)

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kmayan candan gayret kesilmez

From the unfled soul striving will not cut, and the nightingale will tear again his wings across the roses thorns (natures gleaming shears ground sharp), and faithful, gold-flecked eyes remain unshut, though the wind may whip a bitter skein of sand torn from the dark earths bourne across the face departing down a long and narrow road, toward the gracious steppe beyond, as over the distant mountains vale, sun is born into another circle Drip another ardent, fluid trail over the earth, and I am drawn; as if by some nimble code the traveler drifts on and on. (03/02/2014)

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Yarim gelmez oldu niye

Wherefore has my love become un-coming, regressed to pressure like the river straining agape against the dam? Her fingers wonted running over shoulders, shivers on memorys stream; if released, she falls failing, flooding, and flowing over those borders, so too might I then tumble from trees I passed my sleep in growing, fragile leaves shed to crumble at a faint suggestion of her touch; from my serrated, fractal edge un-spooling silver threads across her surface, blushed with the ardor of the sun a pattern into her stream pooling, as her fingers gently run on russet features worn with adornments throes; yet, like a river un-flowed, un-running, caught like ice beneath my ardent gaze, my love un-coming catches light, weaving blindness from the rays until the dam at her breast collapsing, crushes her lovers chest. (15/02/2014)
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III. DESIRES

Yolculuk

I have offered myself mistaken for triumph the ideal suffering of the pale, wilted rose; My tongue by expectation tied, my eyes have sought asylum from bitter dust cast by this trail through a deserts jilted prose; I am the steppe, and she is the promise of rain over the distant mountain-ranges looming, her breast transpierced by the summits razor, highland forests by her blood so stained; a failing fawn, invisible on the slope, relieves his hooves in the warmth of red soil (so in the foothills, the moutain's shade, I labor, and toil); Ifwhen considered deeply mirages of distance appear, and soon regress to nearness while jounrey wanders astray, sun graces the steppes face and marks another year, what source, what oasis may shift beneath the clay? (11/10/2013)
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The voices ofmy heaven

The voices of my heaven, the choirs, the seraphim, sing not in thunder, but with the whispers of the river Rejoicing, the host of cicadas adores the setting sun; its monstrance, the shifting boughs of the willow. Baptism came not in tongues of fire, but was borne to me on the caress of autumn wind, of November The prisms of rain held in my sky, unfolding into a rose window, their cathedrals vernal splendor. And the birds took flight, the heavens blurred with the sea; in the sky coalesced votive lights from constellations And the sacred night wrought a staircase of my ribs, my heart rose from my chest, pained with grace, a consecration Oh my Jacob, do you so believe in angels, or do you yet wrestle with your frail imagination? (13/10/2013)

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The ninth wave

Ashen, curling fingers her sentences were always tinder when I desired the darkest driftwood shaken from the abyss by the silver wake of umber fish: grey, whose smoke would taste of drowning chaste, and scent of the salt wind. In my hair might linger the memoir of her shifting timbre, of each exhalation by the breeze upon her breathing sails, the whisper of water, the failure of her ribs beneath each new embrace, each caress of the waves. And she is borne under rose blossoms of pallor, her cinders extinguished, assuaged by the murmur, the sweetest benthic hum; so is born yet another siren, a wanderer of the scarlet trail traced by the rising sun. (20/10/2013)

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Adrasteia

Daughter to the rosary of sacred nights, the callow plumred with the sunset of the womb, the mother's lily heart, the blown glass sigh of blood against the ribs, the scarlet wine of candlelight through willow fingers hyacinth, nightshade, her hair curling like sleep from tile rooftops; Truth, this silver flows timeless... (And the garden is awash in moonlight, the wisteria shifting, shadows drip and run like crescent waves upon the soil, where life drifts from the drone of beating hearts the velvet hum of veinsinto taproots and the nascent rose, shades born on the sigh of decomposing cherry, the grape pressed by the passion and the throes of lovers sequestered in the ivyTruth, so goes my mistress through the vines...) She descends in tongues of fire, as autumn trees sigh their storms of birds a thousand fluttering wings, a rain of feathers and silver song blue, the nameless blossom calls to moths by night, with turns of honeyed phraselessness; gold voices of our past lovers, racemates of memory and lust Serenades are promises of dawn. (27/11/2014)
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Doubt

The pronunciation of her name seeded my epistemology with doubt, epithets, alphabets with an oblivion like moonlight bent upon the openness of sea there is salt-water in her veins. She remained insoluble in ink; her words twisted my most careful script into hieroglyphs carved by wind and sand upon no Rosetta stone a cipher whispered in the red-gold language of autumnal trees. Her spine arches with geometry transcending Euclid, upending time the vault of her inhaling ribs, the gasp, the curvature of her breast my most cherished trigonometry approximates in vain her sigh. The moon overflowslunar honey coalescing pearl in the shadows of the valleys of her shoulders; all of my ontology runs frail, and I cannot reify her kiss; she defies my calculation. (28/11/2013)

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Farewell for January

Splinters of bone, these syllables of pleasure flickering in the visage of winter, remaining, I suppose, in questions yet unconsideredwhat measure of lust can be sown beneath the shadow of closed lips? What sunlight refracts upon the fallen snow and so the limbs of trees are scattered, nude, wavering upon the frozen waves, transfiguration of water and rime, the sublimation of earth into blue sky How is harmonized the silver moon, cast upon the ice? He melts like January on the calor of my chest, his frost biting at my neck, my fingertips running midnight blue through hair confused in frost and fire the sky cloudless, translucent, as sun sets in the west There is somewhere a winter that will not leave me snow-blind, roses frozen on my breast. (31/01/2014)

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Evening fever-dream

Repose within a full cloud, I supposeI turned my home upon her side, and an ivy sea goes flowing over red-brick mantle, leaves filing teardrop distance; the yellow horizon, shroud upon the stairway falling, rosewood traitorous with the ice of doubt, the sun in mercury floods in through careless windows; reverie runs slick, fever winnows the dreaming from the embrace of earth, and from above the canopies dissolve in emerald haze, borne on the silver breath of the rose gardens vermillion phrase, as the sun kisses earth. (05/02/2014)

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In the rivers mouth

Sailing to the extreme west of desire, in rapt pursuit of the failing sun, I saw her ghost wrought upon the water, in colors like the rose refracted by the sea, the discrete hues of dawn; Time became a haze, I inhaledawake upon a foreign shorethe salt air, burning like my lungs submerged in amber; wine of patience unrequited, I saw the river cast herself upon the open azure; In the rivers mouth, I could find no tongue, nor wordssolitary screams and sighs contrived her silent lexicon, her thoughts transfixed by stones like swords; waves whitened with vexation, eddies lost amid their whorls, phrases like mercury running through her fingers, and no grain of earth to shape her pearls; I doveshe embraced me to my shoulders, I imbued myself with the clarity of her cold, her soliloquy blue upon my lips, notions of gold precipitating along my bones; like starlight bent upon the sea, with newfound resonance she shone, as beneath the striving waves I found in her my distant home. (09/02/2014)
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Agony in the garden

She emerges from the woodwork once more, wraith of the ivy, aerosol of spring haze, dew in the whorls of the rosewood, vernal faith at the root of my clouded, striving gaze orphaned fruit, the autumn almond drawing breath from careless breezes woven turn of phrase; The twilight halves and resonates, the first kiss of two ripples in a stream thawed by youth our features shiver with water (reminisce of young evenings, enigmatic truths upon the riverbed), faces blur with bliss in the luminescence of the stars white ruth; The river offers gold, dilute and hidden between dark pearls of garden-bearing silt, to those whom in its water cleansed and shriven would spin a diadem adorned and gilt for my ephemeral love I have written gems, such finery, oracles of jilt; I make my offering, the mirror, the rose partitioned from the warmth inside my breast, the birth sullied still with blood, the heart exposed between the lungs, the jewel coalesced from sleeplessness, agony, and lovethe throes of a sole wave from the sea dispossessed; The oleander sighs, weaving anxious mist as I near my love, and a incensed rain inebriates her shine, slurs our midnight tryst my love spurns me, and I dissolve in pain without sorrowfor, from memorys abyss, with the winter snow she will fall again. (15/02/2014)
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The thurifer

Swing lowand again

fall through those vaulting stars, or marble tracing arches in the smoky gaze ofendless sibylline chandeliers, a foreign cosmos lacing through itselfour golden apples, braid ofthreads dyed again as reconciling years shrive the transgressions ofyouth, blazing white in this cathedrals shade with incandescent plenitude, spheres ofsacrosanct lightchasing

motes of dust aflame with dawn, cast through a veneer of stained-glass faces;

Smoke trailing off the pendulum, fire burning grey perfume for an unseen nose; yearning fulfills another semicircle an allelujah so fervent, a fire in the monstrance, and a searing choir shaping pyres of the chapel, ash a fine dust, a faint perfume of myrrh tarnishes the brass thurifer, conferring memory, rust all desire (all oratory fails in the ostensory) is offered up in smoke. (19/02/2014)
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IV. ORPHAN POEMS

Viejuco

Viejuco, in his thinning skin a sunset of contusions sculpted by time and by the wind, tilled, furrowed by such farmers rocks himself on the veranda. Green ivies scale his lattice fence, as the children break like waves scattering upon his garden, their foam disheveled and blonde he feigns a shout, grey careworn stone, as they melt him into sand, as they play games upon his land. Sing the childrenThe old fool wanes and he smiles, sows his laugh-lines, seeding his long-tended orchard with ardor and gratitude. (09/06/2013)

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A heron

I found her ghost in a heron in the curve of his throat, her breast, as the flow of beading water caught the sunrise, I caught her glance. In his plumage, swirled the river of her bluish nocturnal skin; in his slow-beating wings, flumed the topography of her shoulders. In his limbs of long-dead maple lived lines left by her fingernails; in his razing cadences, her want of temperance and patience. In the silver lust of scalesshade fish long swimming across his tongue shone a glimmer of her laughter, and her red ardor in their blood. (22/08/2013)

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Untitled

And the errant hazes of the blue are hands to cradle pensive heads the long-sung siren air of the loon runs like the vernal lyre, unwed save for with her voice: these maple leaves half-steeped in autumn, poppy fields about her lips, cicadas droning in her hair, jewel insects sown in the furrowed earth of her laugh-lines; a ghost of unturned green, she sighs Am I the flower, am I the bee, or am I the honey? (02/11/2013)

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Three haiku

I am enchanted the bee who trembles for love of a garden jade. The wine decanted from her lips, a mourning-dove, inebriates me. Oh, the be entranced by divine fingersalive, on my shoulder traced. (28/11/2013)

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Air spirits

With two steps on the water of illness, and a finger twirling Decembers shivers into silver braids of stillness, our limbs fill with smoking lymph, embers tended by the most cautious chemistry of whirling blood hummingRemember, the pressings of your tongue are sophistry; your exhalations, eyes of amber tinged red with your hearts alliterations the divine stutter, holy tremors in the stoneso when ailing, we remind ourselves we are alive. (30/11/2013)

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On heaven

My Heavenhe called me, loving fervently the blasphemy of it all: a vigil prayed in silk, awake in flaming June. A demure rosary said in stars, and our most holy spirits wrought in displaced sheets; I have counted the days passed within sight of God, weighed against memory, found wanting. Thirteen years colorblind this veil, this incense, this sacristy, and the monstrance remaining empty after the heavens fail. (23/12/2013)

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Icicles

Decembers winsome knife has fallen asleep between these ribs; so too falls this chest like winters kiss upon an orchid heart. And the orphan warmth of night runs in lily rivulets through these arms, fingers laced red with promises of sleep, silver embers in the hearth. Knivessheathed by shaded eyes, polished by a beating heart, reddened by lust, hypnotized by endless hills of poppylearn to dream. (25/12/2013)

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Air spirits II

How many ghosts have I inhaled? spirits through the lungs unnoticed, memories finely ground as air fly weightless as a bridal veil over the tongue to be ensnared by a thoughtless breath, passed down through the veins, exchanged along blood and tempered by lymph, then cast out again jilted, like a vile apostate thrown from the altar, exorcised, before our vibrant forms prostrate (yet if we bar them, quit to breathe, so too we pass through Aeols sieve.) (30/12/2013)

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An aphorism

God rests her weary soles at the hearth of Doubt a lonesome home carved from shoals worn in water and time, known only in the space between harvest and seed, lust and night old friends, sisters perhaps, they convene to weigh their love of Memory. Endless, his trysts, the poor cavalier, hands beneath their evening gowns, fruitless, all his bliss and prayer Doubt is gossamer and stone, God is dust and empathy, Memory is an edge to parse death from the dead (and against the shore fall footsteps; waves that never sleep). (31/12/2013)

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Snowfall

A divine coincidence, perhaps the night sky running lucid, cloudless, as January spins its threads of snow, clearest conscience of the cosmos, blue and silver, still as a mirror-pool. The biting air, a misplaced kiss of Universe upon our lips, rose petals gentle and unready More than coincidence, perhaps, that snow resembles falling stars, and over ice we walk unsteady. (01/02/2014)

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Birdwing noises

Birdwing noises behind her breast her heart is a sparrow caressed, caught with two hands, singing low among the voices of her distressed and sallow frame, hollow bones and air between her fingers as she plays the sky like an untamed flute as nightingale alights on rose and bears the thorns with ardor mute, shame unwinding silent fingernails through the ream of her white gown, light as feathers. (02/02/2014)

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Rain / Debt

Lightning runs a white knife through heaven, brightness transient, silver koi swim turbid sunset circles and the rain comes, gold coins beading on bare arms; the river dissolving in white noise, songbirds lost beyond discretion in low-hung clouds; the voices sung by hands, fruitful lovelines are smoothed over; a gift, a transgression, the water stains the skin with pennies of cold, from lily petals, copper, from calloused hands, rose gold; no supplication can reconcile early debt of rain. (13/02/2014)

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Child in the garden

She ascends, climbing the garden gate, wrought-iron slick with Aprils dew and the coalesced promises once ornate of hyacinth overgrown, blue as the torn, frail dress that sheathes her waist (The rain-grey fruit hanging low, pomegranate in the thunderheads, garnet in the undertow beyond the monastery garden an Idol dissolves in alabaster threads: subtle acid of the rain pardons the eternal mothers shawl from her mourning, marble silhouette; features lost beyond recall.) (22/02/2014)

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Cloisters

Heaven takes her vow of poverty a heron shaken from his pond, water shimmers glass as gravity calls rain to earth from the beyond the clouds don their grey habits, regress into a dream of some submerged cathedral where dawn through stained-glass gleams in rays as slow and tenuous as sunlight upon a lovers cheek, streaming through a half-blind window as she wanders in and out of sleep; the heron unfurls his wings blue vestments come to life; as the sun falls to cloisters, the moon ascends divine. (23/02/2014)

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AFTERTHOUGHTS I

i. Her eyes were unfathomable storms on distant Jupiters whose atmospheres I lacked the science to breach. ii. Searing and white and full of creation, each of her teeth was another sun, her tongue a gust of solar wind: she exhales an aurora bursting with heat and light, blistering my skin. iii. So enticing an accident was she to Father Chaos and Mother Time that they passed their eternities on the chance she might arise as some miracle of probability. iv. They say a man once offered his face to the moon; if that is so, you have claimed your own from the sun in your candor, in your light, I am rendered blind.

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v. In the night sky where our bodies meet illume two cries of heat lightning, heralding the summer rain: a current propagating along the salt of sweat that seals our skin's rapt waiting. vi. There is a certain cosmology to foretelling the movement of her hands beneath satin sheets her fingers trace patterns: foreign shapes whose names I cannot know. vii. Each birthmark is a pebble on the bed of her river-colored skin and as upon the ocean, the moonlight drips a path across the ripple of her shoulders. viii. Forever erratic, the summer rain tears new petals from their vernal stems for her to press beneath her feet an oration from the sky to a dryad so rare that she walks courted by the seasons.
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ix. She is the color of burnt incense, the ashes of a summer fire a red ghost of fallen leaves who shivers into dust at my touch, yet stains my hands so grey. x. She was a jewel in the harem of Indian summers, of streams running warm over cold stone, of trees who wear the shells of cicadas to their masquerade. xi. There are gateways between the seasons, aflood with nameless hurricanes and gleaming with cloudless rain through these days she belongs to wind and sky and migrating birds. xii. In our waterways between the hours, she goes swimming with silver scales, sounding these depths with the tips of her toes, the ripple of her laughter on the crests of waves.

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xiii. There are patterns in the swirling of clouds a copse of blue through the thunderheads, loam on a riverbed overturned by her undue footsteps: dilation of her eyes in tenebrous rooms, we breathe aloud. xiv. There are certain reflections of light which she caught like snow on her tongue she was a pane of hot glass, the rosette window stained in my room, the breeze in the forest green beyond. xv. There are seasons in her every breath her sighs caress the dust of long sleep from the eyes on butterfly wings, she sings, and the lark echoes her songs in the blue moor, she cries, and the leaves turn red their breadths.

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xvi. There are songs known only to shivers of wind through summer reeds, water whispering soft blue phrases in courtship of the bees, the aubade of dawn shifting through leaves. xvii. Beneath the auspice of her waning moon comes the jade glass of cicada song and the sigh of furling lilies her wrists are flowing well-springs across my feet, their waves: the susurration of her heartbeat on my ear. xviii. Her third eye stares from the opal wings of jewel beetles, in their drones resound her consolations her memories: silken, discarded palls of the butterflies.

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xix. Her laugh lines are veins of yellow gold through salt earth, her lips away like wings before a mirror lake a mouth I fall toward like the glass tears of an icicle in the spring. xx. There is smoke cupped in her hands, and ash in the recesses of her eye leaves too early torn from their trees veil the sky, all these: the remnant embers of September burning at her feet. xxi. Like the hand who bears the swallow through the turbulence of autumn skies and wears the butterflies like ringsso she goes unseen, so she sifts between furrowed fingers, long fallow.

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xxii. Like the air rarified with birdsong that quickens in the hum of rain, like the new fawn who dissolves among the rose bushes and teardrop ivy, more a sound is she than sight. xxiii. Like the silver flicker of water over stone, or the solemn valleys wrought by bone below her sighing breastaltars to the contour of fingers knotting through young grass. xxiv. Like the apparitions traced against my window by the morning mist; like the sharp intake of breath, a flash-flood in my lungs before submersion in her river, comes her love.

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xxv. Like the faces painted on the fields by the lilies genuflection for a transient autumn breeze, we existed only as passing chances stars reflected on the seas. xxvi. She was the autumnal fallacy or foretelling rain in the flight of nightingalesof reading the veins of falling leaves when she was written by their shadows on the hills. xxvii. She bit fast the olive branch between her teeth, its pine green feather-leaves at her lips, the opal arms of the dove, white, unfurled, the shiver running silver as she clips her wings.

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xxix. Her kisses are the peregrine lust of mist across this mountainside; she threads my eyelet ivy with fingers earth-caked and willowy; her lips taste of roses and of rust. xxx. The sinew of her throat, like the roots of a new orchard, comes tapping streams below my open arms, and the water succumbs like red paper skin between her teeth and the plum. xxxi. She was young once, and full of ichor: a plum of autumn, a sonnet of skin the color of night, her heart running honey down my tonguesun-dried now and red, she makes my blood.

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xxxii. The nightingale tears his wings upon each thorn of the rose; acts of love come not so easily from the storm-crows of her own blue heavensher rain is yet enough: she sates my thirst, I grow. xxxiii. There is religion in her love, yet there is no faith; there is water in her blood, yet there is no iron nor sugar nor warmth without the kiss of my tinder lit beneath. xxxiv. The smouldering wings of this mothembers that remember her as a candle, the diaphanous cloth of wax at her arms, her mouth afire from my adoration, am I tempted, wild flurry, scent of burning gauze.

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xxxv Her fingertips in the cold, the veil of my own eyes blown aside, grey like young mist upon the hills, through the kohl that disrobes her red-gold iris fireworks lost in their own smoke. xxxvi. She was the weight of summer flowers upon the hillside, the pressing of the heavens on the trees, the caprice ofAugust showers, the night sky like the crystal wings of bees. xxxvii. She was the avenue paved in pearls of white-hot glass spilt by the moon upon the sea, a mirror of mirrors, a siren unfurling in myth, a wild river running clear.

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xxxviii. She sang her laugh-lines with November, with strawberry wine and ever shifting mirage of the pines with the changing whispers of the maple, her white paper face blossoms red. xxxix. She suffuses with the rivers, her youth diffusing in blue enigmas, mist that blurs where water and sky are lovers, where she must rue their kiss. xl. She dons the orange fire of October, the red tinder of serrated leaves, the cinder glow of the heartwood her fingers, the arrival of monarch butterflies alight on her spine, the mire of old leaves between her toes. (Fall 2013)

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