When we met

your young beauty

was already old

As old as anything gets

in this world,

as old as the salt in the sea,

older than me.

You slayed the reflections

of fallen arrivals

at the pageant

of pride that fades.

You raided the bones

of desert royalty

for DNA

And I waited

like a cave of geodes

for your fingers

that arrange the stuff of life,

for your braids of light

that hold up the dead sky.

In its tendrils frozen

your light returns

with its shining warmth,

its rescue of the moon's

turbulence.

I am the rock that waits

for your tough little feet

cells answering cells

in the web where there is no answer

save the shuttered water

and its ageless thirst

to swell without eyes

for your skin,

to yearn without features

for you casting glances,

the eggs that I catch like seeds

from all the reeds that bend

a chandelier's pen.