5.2

When first I slept, life was cold in the ground hard by. As I watched, the morning sun could not, its beams a thousand piercing rays, once breach that venerable crust. My crust is a self-made prison, a rime of ancient tales and mounting fears that took me an ill-spent youth to build; a prison of myself, to myself, for myself. Where once anon you planted seeds, I saw no fruit thereby. Where yet again I saw you tread, the earth's unmarked thereby. Where now and then we passed the time, my heart is rent thereby. When first I slept, though spring encroached, life was cold in the ground hard by.

When last I slept, the world was all awrack. A noonday sun and a quiet glen had my cares belied, and I, (once careworn, cold, and clumsy,) allowed myself to sleep. What cosseted place had this once been! What blanketing power to renew! The rime away, the man remains. And yet, and yet: the time explains. It cures all wounds, dulls all pains, breaks down walls, compounds gains. I can with perfect expediency understand life's softening effect on my own jagged bones, but why have things gone so with you? Why has the wearing of the calendar served only to file down your cutting words and soften your carbide will, when in me I see the year wear down my finest features? Why then has it refined you? I take it as an attack. In my sanctum of rest, a keening lack. Suddenly, the life in me wants you back, for when last I slept, with what was all the world awrack?

When next I slept, I owned the world in pride. What blooming lavish fields lay there beside? No cares have I, or should I "we" for our sake be? I'll tell a story of a sunset. I cannot open my eyes but you are there. I cannot move my breath but it stirs your smell. I cannot fall to dream or it blanks my mind. And yet the blank would not unpleasant be. The rime forgot, the glen forgot, and only this, a field where your hands sow and my hands reap. What of this field where we sleep, our might combined to hold against all odds a dream (against the odds of time and daylight a dream we both can live to love in). Where once was morning light, the sun has crossed the wide expanse of heaven to bring in the tide, a rising urgent question I'll decide: when next I slept, I owned the world in pride: the fields I lay near were just you—heart. Mind.

I hold you whether the sun will set or no.