Year After Year
If cut open, you could count
my regrets etched like rings
on a tree stump, parsing
blue skies from pain.
You are a phantom
limb to me. I reach out
only to grasp empty air.
The stump aches, a dark cut
weathered through the years
we’ve been apart
now more than together
Separation is an ax, a clarity
that comes too late. How is it I see
you as you were, as you never were?
Time is a liar. Yet, I hope
for a shoot to still break forth
to stretch upward to that place
of reunion, where rain clouds
are wrung out like a cloth
and the sky forever brightens
breaking into endless day.
If cut open, you could count
my regrets etched like rings
on a tree stump, parsing
blue skies from pain.
You are a phantom
limb to me. I reach out
only to grasp empty air.
The stump aches, a dark cut
weathered through the years
we’ve been apart
now more than together
Separation is an ax, a clarity
that comes too late. How is it I see
you as you were, as you never were?
Time is a liar. Yet, I hope
for a shoot to still break forth
to stretch upward to that place
of reunion, where rain clouds
are wrung out like a cloth
and the sky forever brightens
breaking into endless day.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson