He asks me for a song, so I sing one just for him.
I sing of these unholy gifts stolen from within
the refuge of music. A pale moon loiters
among the geometry of stars. They know about us:
Together joined under the white moon’s angles of light.
Gossip spreads like shards of broken glass at our feet.
We stroll along the harbor of another night without sleep,
a festival of dreams awaiting us on the other side.
My song seems to fill with other poets’ more generous.
They know of us: the way a simple riff rules our evening moods,
or the tattered silences between us. Each night
a quiet desperation. The stars measure the breadth of my love.
I cannot be for him whom I never have been.
I will wait for him . . .
Beth Brown Preston is a poet and novelist with two collections of poetry from the Broadside Lotus Press and two chapbooks of poetry. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Writing Program at Goddard College. She has been a CBS Fellow in Writing at the University of Pennsylvania; and, a Bread Loaf Scholar. Her work has appeared in numerous literary and scholarly journals.
