Aubade December Poetry Challenge

Aubade
(for Finch’s disappeared muse)

Before the real light of day,
the snow’s fluorescence, illuminated
by the moon’s blade, the sharpest,
thinnest crescent, awakens and fools
me into believing you have left
already. The sheets are chilly, the bed,
empty; you are always leaving.
Standing in the window’s frame—
call me woman in pane, call me mourning—
I can see the craters your soles
will make, that your soul made,
where you will punch through the crust,
leaving a trail, a path of hollows
for me to follow through the cold,
the whiteness. But when I reawake in the real
light of day, the snow has melted,
and your prints that resembled a deer’s path,
or a coyote’s are erased. You are always
calling to me like the owl that knows
my name, the owl that questions the sky
and the trees, the owl that can’t tolerate
the night’s silence. You call me winter
morning; you call me thaw. I’d call you
everything; I’d call you leaving.
But you’ve never had a name,
so when you leave, I have no way
to beseech you to stay, to call you back;
I have no way to say goodbye.