--- P E T E R   M U N R O

I cannot complain in this hour of skin.
Frost prickles the ground, glints around our house
as night tightens its grip.  I should not scrimp
on praise for your heat when the moon hardens
such chill fire beyond our walls, till the boughs
of trees we've planted glitter their burden.

Stained warm beneath sputtering candlelight,
the conversation between flesh, the dumb
and hungry speech in touch, subsides.  All rites
of comfort seem frail, as shadows flickered
vague against a wall.  In this God-sprawled slum
I should take warmth from your smoky liquor.

Shadows leap the ceiling's length, quickened skeins
spun alive as flame wavers toward cold,
each candle a spindle that wax constrains.
As tapers expire and the dark reaches
in to wrap us in its infinite fold,
I try to restate our salty speeches,

spent wick, thickening wax, depleted spire.
The deep, creaking with stars, cracks down like slow
ice.  Sleep drifts across the face of it, dire
as any moon, armed with a quilt.  I cling
to hope.  The planet wheels on axis, blown
small on the same wind that takes us to wing.

Our four walls stand taut with the weight of night's
glazed field.  With stone reclaimed from rubbled faith
we've built this house on sorrow and delight.
This bed is one and one lifetimes across.
In this heaven of warm I yield, am freight
carried in sleep while the made world accosts

the windowpane crystalled with frost like fire.
What made us be body, by which to touch,
to converse, to build, gave also desire
to heat each other by.  And so I spin
praise, dream-frail and naked in our dark clutch.
Though ice broods near, our breathing drowns its din.

I cannot complain in this hour of skin
stained warm beneath sputtering candlelight.
Shadows leap the ceiling's length, quickened skeins,
spent wick, thickening wax, depleted spire.
Our four walls stand taut with the weight of night,
the windowpane crystalled with frost like fire.