POEM: You Are Not You

You are not you, but a shaft of white,

The chance starlight that I look up to see,

Who is the boat that carries me home

Over black water, beneath a new moon

When the dark is a velvet soup.

Who is not a kiss, or madder red lips

Or even the sound of a pucker, thinned

By fear.  Who is a fire blazing within,

Not a lone voice but the communion

Of many dead poets conspiring rebellion.

You are not you at all,

But a wind that whisks me clean,

A sinful lushness of summer greens

Against the long-shivering hours of need.