Morning

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No, but listen. Far off
there is a music, intricate
and full of grace. There are people
who have danced until
the sweat soaked their shirts
they are sitting now
shoulder to shoulder, heads
almost touching. They don't need
to say anything; their bodies and the music
have said all there is to say. If I will never
be one of them, is that so bad?

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Rose
Washes the east

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You said
you wished we could feel
the way we felt thirty years ago
at the beach, the first time,
running from death and horror
and arriving at what seemed
an anchorage.

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Is that more than roundabout way
of saying I wish I still loved you?

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I can't do it myself.
And my friends are busy
far away
and troubled themselves.
There is nothing here
but the faintly caught music
and the rosewash sky.

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Last night
Arcturus pricked the western sky,
worried, holding
an embarrassment of old old
stories;

---

And as the night turned,
he fell softly
into the mumbling waves:
he is a spring star, too young
for the rigors of winter.

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In the small hours,
when even the summer stars have set,
the brilliant winter kings rise:
Capella rides, cold
and uncaring, into the empty sky.

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