We are mere creatures surrounded by darkness and light
surrounded by heat and cold -- always trying to escape one for the other --
inside our warmed houses when ice breaks from the sky
under domes of florescent bulbs at an evening ball game
fiddling with blinds to block out day.
You always said: Remember heat and light, baby
as if it was a code to life on earth
as if it was a mantra to repeat when you are gone
a yoga position to practice and then convert to principle
a relationship I had to remember.
The sun wakes me – it slips under my eyelids. The touch
pleases me as if a lover has placed his lips to my sleeping ear.
He whispers sweet words that bring chills to my skin.
But again I didn’t dream about us and the bed and night are empty
where they once were filled with the presence of you.
Outside there’s a hole in a cluster of moving clouds
a bright ovoid blue as if an eye from heaven
and the notion comes to me that it might be you
and I hear wake up, wake up, wake up in my head
as if a command, a cliché, and something past anything ever said.
Guess I’m only a girl with the sun and stars in her eyes
trying to turn the fire in me down to gentle flame
the stone to building and tears to sea.
I don’t know the way into the riddle of a dead you. I don’t yet know
the whys and whens of your resolution on heat and light.
But I know my way around the sky. And I know my way around my head.
And I know you can’t see the world unless you go inside.
We live inside each other forever -- The spirit stronger than the body’s illusion.
We’re playing with pure energy, baby
still mere creatures adjusting our vigor in the middle of four extremes.