Breath caught - within irises lined with silver gilt -

steel shoulders of hope, like trees in winter,

unwavering statues, among the dying fields of Autumn still apparent, beneath the first drifts of snowfall, pure

and the fierce songs of winter, harsh, bypass you on each and every side

unwavering to the sudden change of season.

The birds find solace in your limbs as arms and legs as trunks of roots of ages of hallowed love, profound - reaching the pads of my feet planted pure, among dirt and sand touching you ever so gently, with a song of my own.

My dearest soul, we share the universe the clouds and sun, the phases of the moon, the planets and stars, the rise of each Vesuviant dawn and the angelic embrace of the calming whisper of the coming of night.

My most holy heart, I bow my head in grace for what cannot be revealed is felt, and I pray to your human form, divine, for you have allowed me to die a thousand deaths to myself, within you.

We have taken flight, together, apart, like Ancient Greeks upon peaks of the Hindu Kush, while walking barefoot as indigenous once did in one of five Great Lakes walking side by side, oceans away.

Here I am - me, with you

and you mean everything

to me.

© Susan Marie