fog of the morning and night

10/28/04

it was your birthday, this week
and I didn’t come

I didn’t come ‘cause I’m still lost
amiss in the fog
like a once-druid now ostracized that
runs in slow motion in the mist on the docks
that lie in prairies of gray, lands of stone
worlds of oceanblue and ambient lovelight
that all ebbs and seems compelled to fade
against its strongest
wishes
oh, it won’t fade
but it will

and if I could come to you in this vortex
I would; I know I’m there
but I’m welded shut in the clouds and
rooted to this place in this coastal soup
so much white and so much silence
to distance myself from you and
it only brings us closer

it never left, but that mist it closes
back in around me tonight as a tighter shroud
and in its depth I see your smile
and that rough laugh;
each light that swims in the gray
is the light of a thousand trains
that pass us by in the night
each the heart of those eternal traveling tales
you spun on the notes of a spanish guitar
next to the tracks
the steel that reminds me forever of the sunrise
and calls out with open arms
the journey your gray hair on the wind

for peter r. savenko, grandfather