Full Circle

It is as you said. The beacon

from the promontory beyond the wetlands

visits your little room and wakes

a shadow dance along the mantle.

A cut flower artless in a jar.  The clock.

A bowl of nectarines.  A snap-shot - you and I

ringed in some distant calendar.

And I,  and you, love, now in this veering light

have come to terms at last,

each by each forgiven and reprieved.

I cannot say how long the pact will keep.

for now trust only that our mood

has turned full circle -  or perhaps

we see where lifetimes of wan hopes 

have run aground.  I will not ask.

I will dim the lamp and watch

your beauty wrap itself in sleep,

beyond the urge of flesh or gravity,

free from your questing fevers.

The forgotten yet familiar makes us weep -

that blemish in the cusp where neck meets shoulder,

eyelids I somehow never quite believed,

the fragment of my name, the way you stir

and turn and like the beam that sweeps the sea,

beckon and pardon us, and guide us home.