A Certain Morning

©Steve King

All rights reserved

 

 

This window admits little light,

even as the sky is lifting blue.

These morning clouds appear too soon.

 

Day upon day,

measuring in moons

and a slow dark drift of stars,

all disappearing, while I try

to purge these eyes of everything

that would invent new dawns.

 

I called indeed at first

from the distant center of a dream,

dreamed that you had answered

through a dark cloud of your own.

I could not hold those meanings

in a heart’s uncertain light,

so all the while I prayed to wake alone.

 

Watching to night’s latter end,

I’ll not disturb the shadows, no;

nor any of the rising shades within

that must at once be mine and yours.

Or even you and me.

These mingle in a kind of drizzle grey just now,

not rich enough to pass for color,

nor for things found in a decent light of decent day.

 

I stir now with desire as to a perfect stranger,

just that way the perfect stranger knows,

stretched beyond the bounds

of new and old beginnings,

those with neither name nor place,

and of each recollection

whispering the deaths of easy ends,

for I am poor at heeding these

and shall not try again.

 

I seem but a dream, inviolate,

and would deny the moment.

Each thought retreats,

spent waves slipping dark sands,

lost to looming tides

and the refuge of the deep.

 

Yet some true measure must abide

to spin such shadows out of sight.

Some shall flee, while others keep;

all else that’s left defies the old commands.

What this may be, I render to your hands.