When, yet as Youths

When, yet as youths, our
strange ways met in me
some startled spark was

set which rang and burned
and forced my mind to
bow, my heart to kneel,
my hand to work the

wheel where songs are turned.

In those unformed days,
in the spring time of
billowing youth, you

brought forth mirages
that birthed in me my
wordy cries, born
through the slades of my

hollow visages.

From a high rock we
ran together and
alone in our arms,

tethered by our poor
hearts, and I all eyes
and flushed with the sight
of fireflies made you

light with laughter for

my innocence bathed
naked with yours in
the waters of our

imagination;
pulsed with the sounding
symphony which decked
the feast of our first,

and last, begetting.

Will we meet again,
you and I, under
the marked unminding

sky, in the nesh night,
spread westward, flowing
past the empty vales
filling fast the silk

sails of shallow sounds;

you who shaped my
memory not with
the press of breath or

warmth or flesh or face,
but with movements mixed
under the night moons
in the cold, in the

silence, and in place?

- Nathan Sidoli, Pine Planes, 1995, New Years Night