From the Archives...
Solstice
It is, above all, an effort
Of accumulation as
You go for years, picking up
And shedding
Love like skins,
Hollow bodies in your wake,
Sucked clean
And discarded, thin
As wax paper
Prone in the desert.
Once we drove out
To Joshua Tree,
The moon pliant above us,
The air still and quiet
As our life together,
As night came on
Quickly, sudden
Like a dust storm
Or argument,
No dark clouds warning,
No dry crack of thunder.
We felt the days grow shorter,
Even here, even now,
As if all that had been winding
All this time, had suddenly
Unwound like a spring,
Unraveled like a string.
Perhaps, most of all,
It is losing,
Daylight or memory,
Each self you leave behind
Fluttering lumescent
In the sand
Each time damp and naked
As only trust can make you.