and here is the blunt truth of it:
I will not live without you.I will breathe
and I will walk
and I will fade with the years
but I will not live.should the atoms in our bodies
see fit to disperse
I will follow you
and I will live in the spaces
between your electrons
and your affections.
where are today’s dragons?
we used to breathe fire into our imaginations,
set sail on ships carved like our nightmares.heed me, unyielding beast! come down
and embolden my standard. emblazon my house!burn my fears.
what idols do I believe in? what wrought stone,
what hewn wood, can stir my courage now?
dear J. —
I’m afraid I’ve misplaced
our time.meet me in the waves
at sunset.bring your heart’s
desires.love,
A.
the rain is patiently pattering and I
am full of poetry.you open your eyes at intervals
determined by your quiet heartyour Irish greens
greet me like a long-lost sunrise.I have slept with you countlessly
but for all my penetration
you are dreams away.you are a cavern to be explored
through the toils of a lifetimegraceful troughs are forming
where I have made you smile.in those places you go to incubate,
I will wait in the fields.
foundations
if I hold your hand, I am settling;
if I hold your hand, I am settling too,
or maybe you are settling
for me.my walks are imaginary, with both
my lovers on each side, and they look
down at me with their beautiful eyes
to ask me why I hesitate.
“pick what you want,” he says,
his half-grin on his face.
“pick me,” he says, more softly,
and kisses my forehead with his eyes.but only when you are the same person
can I tell you yes, irrevocably yes.— August Winters, Oct. 2010
I love finding my old poetry because it always says the same thing: I’ve longed for what I finally found even before I was sure it existed.
faith grows
when next my mother asks me,
leaning close with cool tea breath and
garden dirt beneath her nails,
if I believe in godI can say,
yes.it will bring her such comfort, my
mother, who loves her acned cucumbers
and her tart pink strawberries.I will say,
yes,
for god is the unknown.
god is always bigger than the scope of
human knowledge; the unknown
is bigger than what we imaginatively
harvest,discovery after discovery, science
after disproven science.
god is possibility.
god is hope, god is imagination,
god is dreams and god is love.for none of these things are known,
and so they fall to god,
like god always falls and rises again
more mysterious and impossible than before.when we pray, we whisper
our hopes into the void,
not knowing if they will flower.my mother will smile with carrot-stained
teeth,
and we will say,
yes.
I had not realized until
I smelled your aftershave
that the man of my dreams
was an extraordinary ordinary man.