(for Joan Vinge, upon reading The Summer Queen)

Stars hung in the garden
icing the trees with lantern light.
The ghost of my longing stepped from the sky.
Her white hair streamed. Her eyes did not see
the vast ocean of space between us;
they saw only the invitation and the dance.

And the silken chords of music
played only for us, rippling like a living tapestry
in the night. Bells chimed.
Who could prefer fear to her touch?
I trembled when I took her hand.

The music of the spheres is inscrutable;
we dance to it, patterning infinity.
The space between is not vast.
It is only uncertain. We glide through
the intimate cosmos, on silver wings,
tangled in our eternal embrace.