Likestarlings

Turning

Before dawn, you gazed at the stars over the horizon
and seeking for sleep among thousands of dreams
you tried to turn stardust into the early sunlight:

Is it safe, to leave your pain not written
the ache which belongs to your hand
or to stretch out your fingers toward another Spring?

On the garden lawn, the snowman was dying;
how could the blankness of your notebook not be brought
to daylight, the distance finding itself in your diary:

You’ve forgotten the night – the damp secret of darkness
but not a moth caught in the spider web by the door frame
in the corner where the street light is stuck to the dusty wall.

Nothing like noon mounted the thrashing remnants
of everything invisible, ungathered and lost for you –
still by the window, your eyes fixed on the bronze sky:

Who could see the credits of pollen marked on the vase
but not your fingerprints on that glass
empty of water, empty of flowers and as empty as ancient?

Caressing your reading glasses rather than your pen,
you tried to adopt the power of flight from the wood-pigeon
hoisting its wings above the grey bark of the pine branch:

Oh girl, clouds also need the air for flying to me –
the afternoon sun sliding from the hammock of the blue;
as if I’m your father, only poetry reaches its destination,

He said and left the pine bristle between the pages
of the book, each tiny pine leaf
shining like a green filament.