I was in the winter of my life; the folk I met along the road were my alone-born summer.
At dusk I sank into sleep with visions: myself in reckless dance, in laughter, in ruinous crying,
their faces like lanterns hauled through fog — tender torches that lit the hollows.
My memories of them kept the hearth alight; they were the only music in that long, pale house,
the only season I could name as real. When the moon leaned close I would hold each remembered hand
as if it might not vanish by dawn, and in my palms their warmth felt like a fragile law.
Once I dreamed of being a poet crowned in beauty — lines like silver on a priestess’ tongue.
Then fate, an unkind hand, scattered that kingdom: the dream cleaved and flung apart,
a thousand broken stars I kept wishing on until my fingers bled with wanting.
They glittered and hurt, each shard a small cathedral of might-have-been.
I came to learn that true freedom lives in the taking and the losing both:
to drink the whole bright cup, then see it shattered at your feet, and stand unbowed.
So now I walk beneath leafless trees, the year’s last birds gone, my breath a slow pale bell,
and treasure what remains — the fierce soft company of memory, the hard, sweet light of having loved.
THE LONELY WHITE WOLF 