DRINKING WINE AT SUNRISE

“Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.” Henry David Thoreau

Drinking Wine at Sunrise

It is dark when I wake and it is dark when I sleep--
How is that good for the soul?
A candle burns at both ends, I am told.

I breathe and die and I hold me inside for you
to find me like a growling fire, a signal hill bonfire,
a hot inferno and then cyclic still cool ash,
twice torching the rocky hillside of the past,
dancing like paper-white snowflakes in the soft air.

Life is superior like a sky painted in crimson and gold;
I wonder what you have seen in your present moment…
My hands have touched the beating of your
quiet heart inside the changing earth of my soul--

I am a woman, who is restless with propriety,
perching in tree tops with black crows, and
who knows how to define water from land,
even the reversed allusions of the two.
Mine is the heart of a dandelion who heals
and loves as it blooms in between broken
concrete with the burst of a silent bend or a
salutation to a sunset or praying
to an awakening eclipse.

I am a woman whose heart
wears the crisp demands of boldness;
a friend who sees tragedy’s heart drip through
the winter trees like the silver sun
rising in the heat of the morning; a mother
who teaches the taming power of the small,
illuminating the fissures in the hearty spirit,
and a lover gives more love than one soul
could feel and this knowing
is the breath of my driven truth.

I am altruistic and raw as the burgeoning sun’s
tiny tendrils creep from a further horizon,
giving unnoticed life to each place it’s rays touch.
I am a hill of thought defining the
fluid integrity of my rolling essence, and yet
I die a little as the light arcs and
burns through the barren branches as
I mirror my life through the eyes of the sun.
I live even more knowing I know how to love.