The Match

I first wrote this poem in June of 2019, but I dragged it out of the vault this week because my brain is chia seed pudding and writing a whole new poem was just not possible. I *did* give it a few tweaks though, so it counts. ;)

This one will really hit you if you read it to yourself out loud.

The Match

I.

Aurora.

The slow rising of day
that signals our
weary wander down the hill.

Yours.

Every time I hear
day song.

And then,
the gloaming.
A struck match,
the fire’s leaping, and
heat’s rising and release.
The arm in arm
near dance up the hill.
The way we give our skin
to night song.

Yours.

The way they each
come on
like wildfire.
The way the sky looks
in each time, the way
it feels, whatever time of day,
whatever spectacle,
like kissing you.

Those embers rising, light
in the dark, those colours,
alive behind my eyes,
Indigo, violet, magenta,
and the subtle, spreading
farewell-coloured
aching blue of day.

The way I feel them.
The way they inhabit me
whenever I stop and think
your name.

II

You are made
of outside things,
air through trees,
moon on water,
firelight,
so when I miss you,

I don a stolen sweater
against the solemnity
of your absence,
and go in search
of a stand of aspens.

In summer, every breeze
makes them shimmer
like eyes in moonlight.
in autumn, they shed sunlight
shaped like love hearts
carved by the edge of a blade.

These two seasons
are yours.
Summer. Autumn. That
time in the middle when
we clasp hands,
descend and ascend the days
away from light
or toward it
in accordance
with the hour.

The bright height
of the turning wheel,
the perfect union of earth and sky,
the simple truth of your mouth
on my mouth,
and the aching quiet
at the year’s dimming.

E.B. Wild