December

            December                    12/7/04
                                                
At night the sky is vast and slow              
Purifying all in the breath of the cold whisper of the stars

When the moon is full in the crest of her orbit
All is bathed in her silver gaze
And when her eye is closed, all is dark,
In the breath

My heart, my love

You are high now, far above the reach of my fingertips
And deep:
Deep and safe within
So you inhabit everything
And I, who cradled you in my very arms
Am left holding you in thin air, storing your voice in my very bones.
Your tongue in my blood.

In long December’s winter night
When the wolves pad up to the crest of the hill
Their voices mingle my own soul in the breathing of the stars.
The Northern Lights are playing out their mystery
Dancing in the purifying breath
To the ancient whispers of the constellations
Beckoning in forms that shift and change
And the wolves are tipping up their heads,
Their voices escaping up into the empty sky,
To join the dance of the Lights--

And I am caught by heart

Between the fur of their coats and the mist of their breath,
Between the warmth of their tongues
And the totems of their spirits

In this silver reflection, here, now,  I see but in black and white:

Rocky bones of mountains  cold in snow
 wolf eye alight with diamond

The Lights of the North, mist of the Breath
Totem of the spirit above and within everything
The evidence of love that exceeds understanding.   

We long to cling to something

But it eludes all our clumsy efforts, and then turns,
And baptizes us, suffusing us so that we, too, tip up our heads.. 
All that gives voice within us escaping up to join the Lights