6

Question to an Alter Ego

The cycle starts anew forever, never stilled—

God’s gift to empty spaces

of the fallow heart yearning to be filled.

My past and passing places

I carve to images, conform the years

upon an inmost stair

that turns; each treaded moment still appears

unended, poising there

particles of essential fact enshrined.

Thus now, cool as the dawn,

your face rises, waking my midnight mind:

caught, visible, now drawn

veil-like across old metaphors. No cause

I sought for why those hours

signify that passed, seen through a gauze

of gathering powers….

What does it mean, that your cool face glows?

that your sown words have spun

some miracle of being this moment knows,

rising, as might the sun?