A Rugged Vision She Loved, Loved

A Rugged Vision She Loved, Loved

“We cannot choose what we are free to love.”  —from W. H. Auden’s “Canzone”

And now you breathe no more,
And hear her beating heart no more.
She continues writing her soul 
In the mirror you held up—
A reflection easily shaken by the wind.

She revisions the winter you spent together,
Dragging your hearts through the snow,
A white play land where your poems
Pushed against one another,
And each bright sunlit day filled 
Her mouth with fresh words of love
That she would write to you years later.

But after she wrote them,
You could not answer
Having moved to that place
Where fear catches in the throat,
And stops the screams,
And stops the sighs,
And stops the love,
Before its tone turns sound.

Where are you?  Where are you?
She has cried, she saw you, she listened 
To your words, she touched your face—
You, you, a rugged vision she loved, loved.