(for Anne, on the seventeenth anniversary of our first date)
This southern sun cannot eclipse the pale
And dark eternal moment under moon
When heaven’s vault baptized our dusty trail
And future wand’rings, holy and picayune.
Though breaking tides have crashed with fearsome power
Against the tender union born of love,
The lunar pull sustains each potent hour
That gravity our souls were dreaming of.
So waning fashions cannot stay the sun,
Nor waxing passions shake the timeless sphere.
In moondark rays our breathless breaths are one
As when we once orbited the silent deer.
A silent glance still strikes its resonant chime
In bodies moving still through celestial time.