He brings a mirror to the bird's nest for safe keeping,
hoping to retrieve its reflection
on the journey back
from a city
where love's labor has been lost.
But Cupid has made a pact with Orion,
and a noose of stars will fall from Heaven
to snatch up midnight's thief,
and I'll have taken flight
to a place
where branches of bay leaf and blossoming mimosa
dance over a moss-covered ballroom.

I am joyfully lost, at play,
with the 'Monarch of Evening Time,'
eyes 'a muggin' to Djengo
under a silver forecast.

Flickering leaves sway - yes . . . no.
We laugh at this confused idiom,
and about how a pot of gold
at the end of a rainbow
could never make us happy.

It is only the breath of trees we understand.

We wear wreaths of sweet scented cryptomeria;
I steal burnt umber from earth's grit,
rubbing it into my faded jeans,
grinding passion's fruit into the canvas,
an artist who paints not with brushes, but hands.

A philologist, and a love like no other, whispers a promise:
"Never again return to human suffering
in trade for all words."

The tools for coloring were left in a tin can container
on our imaginary window sill
with a view of summer
and bows of thistle to come.

But first,
a spring will have sprung
a field of collective fertility
over a buried king;
his fallen crown
will be the only evidence
that freedom
could ever be at home
in a castle.