Post #101 == Poem

[This poem could probably use some more editing, especially because I was too lazy to mess with the indenting in html. But I like it anyway.]

Golden

Shadows pattern the wall as I write to you
The light from the setting sun is golden
filtered through the leaves (the maple's stars,
the lines and angles from the pine)

On the other side of the glass, the breeze
stirs the pine, the maple, all the leaves
(Their shadows dance on my gilded wall)
The light is the color of honey, of amber,
of summer, of a long and tender silence.

The sun sinks toward the horizon
(like a child sinking into sleep)
It does not blaze through the leaves
anymore, but the light still glows gold.
I would not trade that color

for anything. I need its warmth when
my heart shivers in the cold breeze
that shakes the leaves. (I do not know
how the wind gets through my ribs
to chill my heart. But it does.)

No one around me seems to mind the cold
Maybe they do not feel it, walking arm in arm
Beside them, I walk, and I know all their names,
and we all talk, but: we never touch
(I never tell them I am cold.) I watch

the sun setting in a pale sky, as the trees
darken, and the star and needle shadows
bristle together, choking out the light space:
and the pattern vanishes. I blink, and only
an afterglow remains, staining the white wall

to yellow, to cream, then to the ancient hue
of ivory, of an elephant's tooth, broken,
lying cold on the silent soil.