Poems for Angels
piero scaruffi
TM, ®, Copyright © 1998 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
I count my innumerable deaths
as birds dance along
the invisible thread
of her thoughts.
Her mind steers away from mine,
leaving a glowing wake
of unspoken words and unfelt emotions
in the space between our beings.
I may never find the bottom
of this wind, which seeps
through shrouds of dead leaves
as if trying to wake them up.
Blades of grass reflect her steps,
but not mine, a sure sign
that I was not meant to follow her.
She nods below clouds on fire
to the pulsing husk of the skies,
each eye a galaxy of little suns.
And no silence is the same
anymore.
Like a fawn in the rainbow,
the frailest tear coasting
down the brink of an eyelid
before being gently caught
in the web of your smile,
where it will sparkle forever;
fishing in the pond of time
for the unique moment
that will ultimately have to pass
if the billion moments lived
so far by the universe have
to make any sense at all.
The path was darker than we expected,
but the edge of the world was still
a long way off. The wrong direction
Turned out to be the right direction.
The canyons we crossed were not borders
but wounds in the soul of the universe.
We paused to watch the stars bloom.
We pushed them around, arranged them
in faces and words, glued them in patterns
that we could communicate with.
The night took a shape in our hands
like an ornate map of the future.
When we returned to our tent,
by the dying fire and the dead lake,
we hardly knew where we had been.
But we knew "what" we had been
and will be for a long time:
the kiss that we didn't kiss.
I still see you resting on top of the volcano,
doomed to outshine all flowers,
music tinkling in the butterfly of your lips,
summer drifting through your hair,
your tiny hands waving hello to distant shores,
while clouds melt with the pearls in your eyes
and the winds whisper dreams to your heart.
Tired, you are so small,
walking next to me
through the narrow alleys
half-asleep.
Tired, you are so young,
delighting in a kitten
that meows at our shadows
in the dark.
Tired, you are so helpless,
purring in your sleeping bag
mumbling your poem of sighs
and whimpers at the cold night
that is closing in on you.
Tired, you are so sacred
as the heavy eyelids
quietly surrender
to the heavens
and your big deep eyes
slowly disappear
in the small room.
Tired, you are so much
of what matters in life.
In your hair
curls of ink blend
with sunset beams.
Your lips part
like petals
flash with dew.
And I breath your breeze,
you mirage of horizons
that I was never meant to see.
At the end of the path
curled barefoot
in the luminous shell
of the night, I shall reach
the infinite sunflower
of your face
rising once again
to greet me
on the threshold
of eternity.
Sometimes a poem
is only a way
to say goodbye
and then sometimes
it is a way
to say hello
and the distance
between the two
is but a spark
in your eyes.