Intimate Insomnia

The wind moves through me
unknowing,
breathing life into outstretched branches.

Animated, I stir below a grey moon
sick from loneliness
and floating
on a bottomless floor.

She falls into a cloudy precipice;
her moonlight smoke retreats,
swallowed away, and the night
uncaring
holds sway once more.

Terror is a child
that thinks the moon dead
being so far away.

I console the fear
but dread the absence of light
may be forever.

That which cannot be seen
is no longer celebrated by sight.

Absent in the dark,
and yet present in the you and I,

I, too, fear I am erased.
Or plagiarised. Or replaced.

Oh my love, in this longing I discover
that distance is the first tremor.

It shakes, but does not shatter.
It injures, but does not slay outright,
not until the moon loses her light.

Then comes the first glimmer,
then a whisper,
she appears

and the fear is spent.
Terror is a child asking to repent.

The wind cries silent,
always embracing, never embraced,
dampened by the cold moon

whose face he has unveiled,
and no language remains of the night.

Sleep returns
for one more fight.

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