A Way I Will Not

I will not pretend for you
But will be a cluster of stars
Weaving through the spaces
Of our lives.
So many parts I will be for you,
Dust lit against the background,
Blending outward in the darkness
By and by.

I cannot pretend for you,
Tell you that a rope is a snake,
Crank back a water-wheel that filled you,
Or even smile in the edges of my anger.
Yet -- I will be like a string
Wound and glistening on some fine instrument.
I will twang into the careful bellows of life.
You will hear my resonance as a wide open feelings,
Like a field where sounds are sure in the wind,
I shall stretch until we've touched both ends.

Yet, it is true, I will not pretend,
Enter a stage and them point to your immortality,
Show the audiences the changelessness of you,
Yet not the bleached flowers on your dress.
Instead -- I will be one of the flower's worn threads
And curl like a patient river through the heat
The muddy savanna of mundanity and circumstance.
I will present my colors as a mosaic in your days
And will not break to the strokes and turns
Of your metals which led me once through the waves.