The Poetry of Mark Daniel Milbocker 
Fall of the Last Koi

Pearlescence swam silver through
the shadows of moonbeams full
and falling along the inky edge 
where mossy dreams spread across
the mirror of tomorrow's lake 
until bluesky quickened the search
for plump mouth spiral morsels
amid froggy cantorifications
sucking upon the soggy sides
of my eyes watching your lithe
shimmer slither as a catseye
across the winking pond lilies
around and between my adoring ears
ever an unflickering candle flame 
lonesome in my receding waters

In the end it wasn't a blue stab
to the heart but the icy creep
of the glass ceiling sealing as
the ground exhaled its last and
my lingering heart dangle-dropped 
upon the unrippling vastness of 
space casting a single unbroken shadow
upon the ichor of worlds abandoned
to a last escape from nothingness
coming for our last warm embrace
my iris forever flickering without 
the focus of your opalescent curve 

I am sorry for my negligence
my sight gone dim at the shoreline
failing to see how deeply you slept
underneath the horizon though your
illusion appeared in ghostly wanting
more than once where I needed your
return to triangulate my metaphysics
and flush familiar after all the tears
were spent on damp cotton dreams

Where is the sterling glint wriggling
across the crossings of wavelet peaks,
the peach blush that never is to breach
but fades to lemon chiffon unfocused 
yet as regal as an unroaring dragon
meandering the hours away?

Never was early spring so autumnal
so fallen from naked branch yearnings
just one last pussywillow wink

and then the waters fell slowly still.
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