In passages of dawn, when light changes as quickly as thought.
Birds and their shadows are confused.
Distances are hidden by darkness and ground fog.
A deer steps through the swirling curtain.
Like the spirit of the forest,
it watches and vanishes,
or remains behind the white mist.
I love phantoms though they frighten me too.
Everything I have loved has been able to assume different shapes,
though they thought they were as constant as the morning star.
They forget, it too has phases, building and diminishing.
So, I have seen the women in my life change shapes and fire over time.
I have loved them all the more for their fluid nature.
I love the play of the random,
flickering like lightning or the northern lights,
still certain they burn the same each evening.
As the sunset calms the water and the robin improvises
a solo worthy of Charlie Parker or John Coltrane.
Notes that begin on the twilight coloring the soul of memory.

Bruce E. Tomczak