Icicles Sharpen As They Melt

“Icicles sharpen as they melt,”

You said it in June, in irony,

bringing an early chill to that summer.

The summer I knew you were leaving

And didn’t know you were leaving.

Now watching from my winter’s window,

arms sweat-stuck to the sill,

Seeing icicles sharpen as they melt

I wonder at your wisdom.

out of season

and missing pieces.

You didn’t tell me the inconstant sun

whose fertile fire in summer wields wanton creation

Also wields wreckage upon my winter.

Melting the icicles and

smelting the icicles,

sharpened, hardened weapons of water.

Hanging clustered, guillotine-spears

listening, waiting for me to forget,

glistening as they fall, and, pierced, I recall,

“Icicles sharpen as they melt.”

The sun prism through the ice

warms me and blinds me

Closing my eyes in wakeful doze.

And there you are.

In the meadow of laughter

where we watched the two white butterflies

In their butterfly dance

whirling and circling each other.

Wound up in their own gravity,

a vortex that carries them to their fate

But they are carried together and intertwined

Within a vortex that binds.

My wicked Dream Sprite seizes the chance

turning the vortex of the butterfly dance

into the vortex of a terrible wind

and I am tossed about, tumbling into

the vortex that unravels.

Alone, no second butterfly,

I can only orbit you in a quiet tornado

pulling me apart into the spinning spectrum

the violet minstrel of infinity laughs

and she shares a tiny secret.

Her universal whisper slows my spin

into another wakeful doze -

dream within a dream.

She spins the honeyed tragedy

of lying next to you,

breathing in your rose aura

from the back of your neck

I shivered as your silken earlobe

brushed my cheek like a fallen rose petal

floating on satin winds

into the secret, sacred

rooms of my soul, now laid bare.

The fragility frightens me awake

Thrusting me back to the aching now.

I peel back my sweat-stuck arms from the sill,

The icicles listen and

glisten as a splinter slips into my arm

Blooming the blood teardrop -

extreme unction for a lone butterfly.

A version of this poem was first published on Medium.