LOVE POEM WITHOUT A BELOVED

Nor’wester rip-roars through the tossing beach boles

like we’re on the coral-crofted floor of the green ocean

or I am and you’re not here or I haven’t met you yet

and the threat of memories of meeting you are chains

of incredible sweetness, of permanent sensations

with you who has been here or has not come

though I wait for you, as I wait for the old year to die

and a new one to be born from its ashes, the sweet

is sour, the light is cold, and the hour has yet to strike.

I will drain the bottomless goblet of dread for you

and in the lees find a diamond reflecting glory and desire

back like a mirror o hour I don’t wish to meet again

as the minutes count down to a revelation or Revelations.

The future is the sire of the past ripening in its womb

and the past is a miscarriage growing septic in the future,

is a bellyful of mouldering Autumn leaves as winter

closes in during the dreams of a midsummer’s night.

I bear you on my back, I bear you everywhere

like a heavy shadow that shatters stones beneath it.

For you I will die and a new person emerge from the rot,

my shadow, my dumbshow, my reflection inverted

in dark water, and I wait for you to enter my life

as the sparrow flies into the warm house from the dead winter

and out again: come displace emptiness that it become

mere tolerable solitude as the days of white flame gold,

burning azure and asphalt blue have forgotten me.

Ahead loom life’s vast titan innuendos and fidget-wheel busyness.

In shifting time obdurate granite is as malleable

as potter’s clay slapped like a liar on the wheel.

Universe, verso, one everything rolled into one,

a unified verse, a single song, a stanza, a multiverse, a choir,

the omniverse, the all.