Remember

Remember how love first brushed
against the hard stone of your heart,
how it tugged at your sleeve
like an excited child showing off his latest treasure? 

Remember how the pit of your stomach
gave way with a start and you trembled,
trembled as if you would disappear forever in its fluttering?

Remember how your eyes grew wide with a wonder
consuming the world so wholly, so completely
the taste of it rang through the limits of your body?

Remember when you were the tinder and the kindling
and the spark igniting the fire within ...
How that blaze burned bright ... how Winter fled
for a moment and Spring became your only season?

Remember these things now.

Let the absence you feel
fill the chambers of your silent heart,
and if it should burst, let the echo that remains
be what builds the world anew: 
Be the stone that melts in the fire,
the steam that rises from the ash,
float freely until heaviness overwhelms you
and once again you fall as rain upon an Earth ready to receive you.

Seeds

Each question is a seed
planted in the garden
of our heart's own longing,
and we the soil that bears it up,
we, the seasons that sustain,
deliberate seasons, seasons of chance
the dry seasons and seasons of rain.
O, seasons of hope, seasons of joy
of love, of death, and remembrance:
Each brings its own nourishment
drawing out the tender shoot,
sending it upward toward the Sun,
pushing the answer to the surface
forcing the fruit to ripen in us.

© 6.30.2016 Paul Wittenberger

Unknowing and Unknown

So vast a space between us,
do our shadows even touch?
And with that simple question
am I asking far too much?
Bound together, You and I,
unknowing and unknown,
companions in our common life,
and lovers ... yet alone.
I am here, You are there,
so love becomes a thoroughfare,
an avenue of rich delight
transporting us through endless night.
With hearts unfurled against the stars
you sing to me of secret things
that heal the soul of all its scars
and raise our thoughts as if on wings.
And as we sail a moonlit sky
past the eagles soaring by
you take me deep, you take me high ...
I cannot sleep nor can I cry,
yet I am not afraid to fly ...
No, I am not afraid to fly.

© 6.29.2016 Paul Wittenberger

No Face

I do not think

eternity

a fitting place

for you and me.

Forever has no time to tell

of how we met or when we fell.

Forever can go on and on,

always there,

never gone,

deep as the ocean,

vast as space ...

It cannot smile

It has no face.

© 5.24.2016 Paul Wittenberger

Descant

Night inhabits 
the empty space
behind my eyes,
creating drapes
I cannot draw,
doors I dare not open,
stones rolled back
to block the tomb.

In a dream, long gowns
move like whispers
brushing across marble floors,
and frightened eyes
gouge at the moonlit sky,
concealing in a box
under the bed
those bits torn away,
treasures to be experienced,
pains to be endured.

I study ways
to disappear,
to abandon myself,
to turn and run,
to fade like print
on a yellowed page.

In the good old days,
when I was in for the ride
and not the destination,
how many of me were there?
Can you tell me their names,
all the names,
falling from memory's sky
like bird shit,
splashing against windows,
marbling laundry left out to dry?

Share with me the secrets
you dragged out of them
and I will raise stones
to mark those who are no more,
to reveal a presence
that absence leaves behind.

© 4.28.2016 Paul Wittenberger

Poem For My Daughter

On the patio
the sandbox
where you once played
sits upturned 
like some great green turtle,
its carapace broken,
sand castles blown away,
an unspoken desert between us,
lost to another day

© Paul Wittenberger