Crotchety winter days are on their way
and in the air is an urgency
to start making friends with the dark;
this year more than ever.

I hear it more often these days — the parade of death,
like a marching band echoing from the edges.
No one leading and no marchers in its batterie,
just a dull remote clamour
with the cadence of unerring intent.

Maybe it's time to want what we already have
and turn our orientation toward that secret sound,
placing all our bets on love.

Why the hell not? It's so obvious
we are citizens of each other,
aching in one another's arms — how many days are left
to look up at the sky together,
to marvel
at the luminous golden circle beneath the ancient Ginko
after its leaves conspire to drop all at once?

And now the rains are coming to wash everything clean.

The edges are imagined. THIS... is not two.
The dream of you and me is woven into a sea
of seamlessness, spinning without a centre,
orbiting death never having been born.
It is love, herself,
that playfully breathes in and out the celestial tides,
rag-dolling our petty seriousness along her shores.

It is her alone, drumming up all this beauty and fraught, ravenously thirsty, drinking in her own reflection,
diving, whirling, dancing
madly with herself.