suite for sadness

i want to tell you about the sadness i inhabit.
i want to tell you the way it colors my eyes,
how it
         hangs       upon me like dew
    drops or honey...
not the popular misery of a failed culture, or
the missing lover, or the disinherited family,
or jobs, or responsibilities...

...the sadness that is this beautiful life  ....

as now, with Bach living in a single cello,
a single breathing dragon       ....the wind
is a leafy swirl gracing my skins; my skin's
wed to a pure flame of passing summer...

it's the last light, the way it burns the
treetops like brush tips
painting a setting scene:
    evening approaching
with its
        long         dark
cloak of ashes.

it's the fleeting knowledge of life itself,
this passing parade, season upon season,
the wine of love's
    lips, the
        solitary essence of vibrating strings
.....   stretching      .....a scratching sadness,
an instrument of introspection.

(those who believe beauty is only skin deep
know little of beauty, or skin, or depth)

it's this
    single
serenaded motion, everything
that eludes sensation,
        barely touched
yet somehow as sentient as inevitable death,
like sunrise, exactly like a sad and lonely sunrise
only the sea sees:  it's a
    single
            moment

and that's all there is. you can't move,
barely breathing. you dare not
look away, because this is the only time
this will ever happen.                repeat that to yourself.

this is the only time this will ever happen.

that's sadness.
beautiful, beatific sadness.
an eternal glance, an infinite
embrace, a slow smile, that never-ending
shadow passing through  .....    long and lonesome notes
spanning your entire life, distilling
every tear, every drop of blood,
        each
breath and triumphant moment,
all in a single suite.
        a sadness
that cuts the bone at the back of the heart,
sawing through the lumber of life,
   
    separating
            those two halves of what
was then and what is
now.

perhaps sadness propels us forward,
bringing us closer to life, to each other,
to that single, solitary moment
of deathly beauty:
the only thing you have
[is]
    ...........