Night as a Love Poem

I am your shadow more than
myself, atmosphere without
light, transparent to stars,
this is my comet scar, my Jupiter—
red eye devoted only to your telescope.
I love it best when you reach
with your Hubble, your rockets.
What I give you best is your own
darkness bellied into a bow
pressing onto your landscapes.
Without the curve of you
I would drift into some dark matter.

From:  Inner City of Gulls
Salmon Poetry, 2010

A Blue Mountain at Sunset
                                      for C.J.

you feel like half a shroud: someone who is far too intimate with clouds: they ghost through you: into blue: here where the air thins: where there is more stone than mountain top: you say there are no words for love: but forty-three words for rust: dozens for various kinds of shadow: those that darken the body: others that turn granite to indigo: so stars can find their way back into the sky: there are the words like names for the magnitude of lightning strikes: a thought fires and zig-zags along its synapse path: I call your name: it is the only word I have: for such feelings