after Pablo Neruda

You asleep in bed
in the blue black dark,
your breath a rope
unfurling into a sea
of dreams where
I cannot follow.

I watch the sky
from a small window
for the signs of life
the stars are,
other worlds
we’ll never see up close
together or alone.

My journey almost complete
in the weathered vessel
of this body’s moorage,
when we speak of storms,
it’s more than power

outages, broken dishes,
the many accidents of time,
the fur darlings we lost
to cancer, loves who left
without goodbyes.

Light is falling on us
from centuries ago.

What you don’t know,
what I never spoke—
I have loved your hands,
your hands,
your hands

& the way moonlight flowers
across treacherous waters
to kiss shoreline—
so much tenderness
for such a cold mouth.

Lana Hechtman Ayers, architect of the “Severed Sonnet,” has shepherded over a hundred poetry volumes into print in her role as managing editor for three small presses. Her work appears in Rattle, The London Reader, Peregrine, and elsewhere. Lana’s ninth collection, The Autobiography of Rain is available form Fernwood Press.