“Though lovers be lost, love shall not;
and Death shall have no Dominion.”
Dylan Thomas

Building on Sand
1-3/9

1

Everywhere the afternoon|
gropes steadily to night.

Some people have lit fires;
others read by candlelight.

 Geese litter the river bank,
drifts of snow their whiteness,
stained with freshet mud;
or is it the black
of midnight’s swift advance?

They walk on thin ice
at civilization’s edge.

Around them,
the universe’s clock
ticks slowly down.

2

 Who forced that scream
through the needle’s eye?

 Gathering night,
the moon on the sea bed
magnified by water.

 Inverted,
the big dipper,
hanging its question
from the sky’s dark eye lid.

 Ghosts of departed
constellations
walk the night

Pale stars scythed
by moonlight
bob phosphorescent,
flowering on the flood.

3

 The flesh that bonds;
the bones that walk;
the shoulders and waist
on which I hang
my clothes.

Now they stand alone
beneath the moon
and listen at the water’s edge
to the whispering trees.

 They have caught the words
of snowflakes
strung at midnight
between the stars.

 Moonlight is a liquor
running raw within them.