Kingfisher

^{for Roya}

You are far and I am a falling thing.
My winter haunts our summer hunts
 
when we were blue and blur. Remember?
I remember watching you watching the river.
 
How you wore the sky on your back and the earth
on your breast. How you pierced the river
 
and scattered the clouds. A bolt split through me
seeing you at work and at play, hearing you
 
rattle and rush up and down the river the length of day.
Those spring mornings, I sensed new depths
 
in the meaning of the word alive,
understood how sunlight and mist conspire
 
to reveal us to each other. But each winter
I must lose you to find you again. I see you everywhere,
 
in everything the wind stirs. This morning,
for instance, as I was reading the book of the forest,
 
I noticed how each ghost gray beech tree clings
to its autumn leaves, saw in their trembling
 
the color of your flanks, a copper nimbus
clouding my love-sight. My dagger, lover, queen,
 
eros arrows us to the spot. The river talks
stories of us if you listen, and the trees keep our secrets
 
like moss, like lichen. Maybe memory
is not such a bad thing after all—
 
memory will fly you back to me.
Until then, any perch will do,
 
and a little river medicine.