I remember who is gone, and who remains.
I remember their names in the coral dawns
And saffron sunsets walking on the water
With the wind across winter’s green, green sea.
I see their bodies refracted in the green light of summer,
In the dancing leaves and afternoons of thunder
When sudden rain relieves the humid weight of memory,
In dangling webs and ladders of moonlight
And village streets lit by windows’ narrow beams
Upholding midnight vows and pleas
To Hold me, hold me please. . . Hold me,
Don’t let dreams keep us from our waking sleep.
Their faces in my mirror, graying hair, blue eyes
I see in skies reflecting gravity, in the deep
Black in black behind starlight’s roses and thorns,
In the hot day’s lilacs of noon suns, in sweat and wonder
As they come and go through me, that another sudden winter
Comes, will come out of tomorrow’s unborn snow.
I remember it all like stone cut from a forbidden quarry,
The words they spoke, the lips, the hands that stroked
And held, working through rough flesh and bone,
And the laughter that came after each disaster
Of a living world without answers, of remembered love alone.
A resident of the dank and moldy primal forests of West Tisbury for 32 years, Lee H. McCormack has reportedly been seen, usually from a great distance through high-octane vision-magnifying devices.
