from All the Purple Deer

I have loved you for a thousand years
is all I have ever said.
Before sleep, hours of purple deer

prance across clouds like bruised prayers.
Go ahead, blue-black every color for pillow thread
until I have loved you for a thousand years.

Morning fog's a sleepy hunter, never clears
this dim city. Birds wake to sing the dead—
before sleep, all the purple deer.

Copyright © 2008 Christopher Shipman All rights reserved
from Salt Hill Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission