The bedroom window filled with early morning darkness,
I drink in what little light appears.
It’s as though I’ve always been alone.
Sadness clings to me in the silence,
a sullen throbbing that refuses to quit.
Sadness in the unflinching eye of sunlight,
a borderless sentence that reveals my loss.

I can’t tell you why your footsteps never cease,
why your voice breathes its song in every room,
even as I come to the table each night, my hands empty
except for my yearning made of bread and broth.
I wish I could tell you of my plans for us,
how we will share the soil, the roots, the heart
of a great redwood deep in the forest.

For  now I empty the pockets of my mind,
run toward small exits in search of something.
In the slanted light at the edge of sky
opening to an invisible world,
I seek a season of lull.
In time, when the moon echoes
like a lantern through the trees,
on a starry night, it will find us,
your branches and mine entwined,
your leaves and mine
shimmering in eternal embrace.

Founding member of The Three Poets.  Advisory board member of the Nassau County Poet Laureate Society,  Sasha Ettinger has many publishing credits include, Oberon, Off The Coast, Persimmon Tree, Walt Whitman’s Bicentennial Poets to Come.  She recently published her book of Zuihitsu poetry, Echoes of Light and Dark.