Like Ashes Upon A Golden Threshold

 

Richard Milazzo

Originally published in The Evergreen Review Issue 107 in 2004.
 

There what will I find of you,
Expect to, your words like ice
Forming on a branch, the soul thawing
In the moon's splayed thigh,

A bridge like a lapsed heart,
Snow the color of empty sheets at dawn,
A river turning into a lost lover,
And in the garden the sadness of the open gate?

And what will I bring to you, after the gods,
Can I, the memory of youth's flower
Breaking at twilight, placed everywhere
Like ashes upon a golden threshold?

For A.A. -- Paris, December 18, 2003