Published on: 2/21/2015
Your Adolescence Rising

Your adolescence rises
like a vapor from the ground
with awkward stops at nursery windows
and at tombs.

Your conflagration blazes
like a banner in the night
against the folding gray of tables
and of hearts.

You hold your mollusk soul
supreme above its ever-changing shell.
You bleed out pearls
against our sandy contradictions.

I only wish that I could help you
through these seas and through these tides.
I only wish I could illuminate
your rising in the night.

But I cannot, for I am part,
although reluctant, of that night
of that conformity in which we adults sleep,
perfect and dreamless, only broken
by occasional regrets
and only startled by the coming of your day.