Emperor Morning Poem by Bernhard Emil Bruhnke III

'I fell into the ocean,
and you became my wife.' - Tom Waits


Small, sovereign waves
that call our unknown names back to ourselves
in the frail, eggshell morning.

The air sighs over the fallen empire of the moon
and crowns the light with her salty fragrance.
A whisper cools and churns over my beam
of disguises.

My strings, unattached,
reach now for the stems of the sun
that decorate over my pale, hermetic frame.

Young, saffron light, disrobing the naked world.
A light that knows no shadows.

Celestial waves scatter their dreams
onto the golden sand.
Each crash a magician,
every undulation leaves a war of mysteries.

I listen, almost too closely,
(In between every wave, there is a silence)
to your wild thunders,
(a silence I thought only God could hear)
your foam teeth dining on the shores of this moment.
(until I finally learned, God lives between the waves)

A moment divided only by the moment
and our misunderstandings of her.

At the now, the here, the unmistakable presence of present,
I cannot speak to other men.
I no longer know their language.

I am overpowered by your voice, your lost sonata,
your ode of phantoms,
your masked oratorio.

I fold my every misery like a starfish

and throw them into your echo.

I no longer want their laughter or their chains.

Their moonlit serenades
or their gale of fireflies.

I need only you,
my Emperor Morning...
and what your majestic hands can tell me about endlessness.