Aubade
       

I had waited, with growing hunger
to return to a remote mountain,
waited for the road to open,
to be under a new moon, with
the celestial multitudes coming true
and I waited a few more minutes
for all trace of daylight to die away
to slip my boat into the invisible lake.

My face tipped back, as if to kiss
something more lasting than desire,
while other fires died out around the body
of water reflecting pure firmament.
I was suspended above and beneath stars
inside a night where quiet deepened.

I was, out there, as far from our life
as the hereafter, save three candles
keeping watch from a lantern, small
lighthouse on the place of shore where you
had fallen asleep, sound in your feeling
that I wouldn't drown but would return,
secured in your arms again before dawn
broke the summit in brilliant white descent
and in its wake, returned to the meadows
all the colors of wildflowers we have yet to name.

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Copyright © 2018 Noĕl Hanlon All rights reserved
from Trusting Distance
Salmon Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission