Because the substantial (the corporeal firmament) is validated by light

I think of you, from zygote to senility – as linear and unbroken
history – a woodland walkway defining voyage and destination –
unaltered by external stress – the entire egg, uncracked.

You are a motion picture show, a face and body that flows
from baby fat, through corporate lean, desire, dread and death –
you are a memory, even as events begin to unfold.

I see you twenty years from now, on a cedar bench
by the river’s oxbow, as your light arrives – you wear a scarf
and feed lean birds gathered in frigid November air.

And you are here, across from me, in this café, ordering
croissant and a Turkish coffee – dressed in the skirt
I know so well – it reminds me of wind on hungry sunlight.

On the edges though, you are already gone – the child who in her crib,
gathers night into the mysteries of goodbye – welcomes morning
on the window-sill as the arrival of the first spring phoenix.

I think of you and you are time – midnight train, rainfall waves –
traveller captured in proceeding light – gone yet still arriving.