The Rivers I Have Hidden From The Sea / 2011

The Rivers I Have Hidden From The Sea

Night,
don't end.
Don't
leave me

here,
to face the day
alone.

I paint myself,
in varying colors -

scream red
from a lost mother tongue
of my German blood
buried below layers
of liver-spotted skin,
scar tissue,
and choking veins.

I swallow blue,
spit back the salt of oceans
beyond my understanding -
the black of water yielding
only a scribble of stuttering white
to even the fullest moon.

The eyes of my wife
hold more secrets
than all the depths
with their bone armies
at ease,
mute beneath the rhythm
of the waves' unending lament.

She sleeps,
I dream
and try to fathom the rain
outside falling through darkness,
steady and slow,
but enough to fill a heart
by morning, the suffocation of sleep
stealing night again
from my imagination
full with chalk effigies
of puddled moons
and submerged stars.

Clouds come
cover the sun,
dusk waits impatient
at my wet feet
for the deluge of dark
where art is free to follow
the rivers I have hidden from the sea.